The Hulster festival Vestrock is different from all the hundreds of other festivals in the Netherlands. You can see this immediately when you approach the center of the Zeeland fortified city. Right next to the star-shaped ramparts, on a piece of land called Buitenvest, there are three festival tents and a sturdy main stage, including an impressive light show setup. The site looks like a festive bulge of the intimate city center: from the local Pearle optician you can see the multicolored flashes of light hitting the mirrors.
An intensive program with international names and rock shows until after midnight takes place here for three days. And there is no person from Hulste who can escape it: Vestrock is an inseparable part of small-town life this first weekend of June. And Hulst is proud of that unique characteristic of Vestrock, as you can see when you make a tour through the city and around the festival site; from early childhood to the residents of nursing homes, and from the mayor to – of course – the festival bosses.
Vestrock, founded in 2010 by two music lovers who also wanted to organize a party, came up with a special poster this year. The independent festival in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen had managed to get the British band Editors as the headliner on day one – a band that headlined the big Pinkpop four years ago. And the program showed more stubbornness. On Sunday, for example, the pop phenomenon Antoon was lined up, alongside a DJ duo with the curious name Goe Veur In Den Otto and the child hypnotist Mega Mindy. Anyway, one of the most amazing festival posters in years, and you wonder how that came about.
The residents of Hulst, Marcel Verhaar and Gino Baart, can explain it. Thirteen years ago they thought it would be nice if such a fun pop festival could be organized in their municipality, because there was not much to do in the region. In 2010, a handful of bands were programmed on the field just outside the city wall. The organization was not easy, says Baart. ‘The weather was bad, in advance we sold half of the approximately two thousand tickets. So we had to use our holiday money to pay the bills.’
Still, the sun shone on the day itself. “The weather was beautiful, and we sold out at the door.” It was the start of an extraordinary cultural phenomenon in Zeeland. As a low-threshold independent festival with cool names, Vestrock turned out to be able to support itself, without a profit motive. And every year Verhaar and Baart tried to outdo themselves. ‘After five years we thought: why not try to bring in international acts? Not one festival in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen dared to do that.’ Vestrock grew into a festival with more than 10 thousand visitors, and the money raised from sponsors, catering, subsidies and entrance fees meant that, in addition to local talent, increasingly bigger names could be booked, up to the hit Editors this year. Baart: ‘Make no mistake: we have been working on this for seven years. We had to network for a long time.’
Vestrock has meanwhile become much more than a pop festival. The festival transformed into a sort of signboard for municipal solidarity, and a festival in which just about every resident of Hulst is now involved. “It was quite exciting in the first few years,” says mayor Jan-Frans Mulder, who takes a breather at the backstage on Friday after the screaming rock show of The Darkness. ‘In the city council people wondered: what kind of audience would come to that? And what kind of straps? Will it be fun or aggressive?’ After the first editions, most of the resistance dissipated. ‘We saw that the whole of Hulst was having fun. And that Hulstenaren who had left the municipality returned for it, and made a kind of reunion of it.’
The whole of Hulst got involved in Vestrock. ‘There are now hundreds of volunteers working there’, says Mulder. ‘The local companies sponsor the festival. The carnival associations are tapping here and the scouting takes care of the campsite, with six hundred tents.’ Vestrock, says the mayor, became an important municipal binding agent.
You can see that for yourself when you look above the tents. Elderly people sit on the balconies of the nursing home and watch the spectacle with binoculars. And children from the age of 6 swarm across the site without parental supervision: it is safe inside the fences. On Sunday, K3 and Buurman & Buurman are on stage for them. Verhaar: ‘Then in the morning there will be a ribbon of a thousand children in front of the entrance. That’s really cute.’
Because Vestrock was increasingly supported, the creators decided to really expand the festival into a municipal party. Baart en Verhaar: ‘We are now organizing a special program with Dutch-speaking artists for the elderly with those binoculars.’ A highlight in Vestrock’s history: ‘When we had Jan Smit here on stage, and we transported a 96-year-old lady to the site in a taxi so that she could see Jan Smit perform one more time. Splendid. She had her Jan Smit scarf on and was able to talk to him afterwards. She passed away shortly afterwards.’
