Bestival
music festival
Bestival was a four-day music festival held in the south of England. The name Bestival is a portmanteau of the words best and festival. It had been held annually in the late summer since 2004 at Robin Hill on the Isle of Wight. In 2017 the festival relocated to the Lulworth Estate in Dorset. The event was organised by DJ and record producer Rob da Bank along with his wife Josie and was an offshoot of his Sunday Best record label and club nights. The initial Bestival attracted 10,000 people, growing to 50,000 in its final year, 2018. Bestival won 'Best Major Festival' at the 2015 UK Festival Awards, having won 'Best Medium-Sized Festival' in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009, 'Best Major Festival' in 2010, 2012 and in 2015, 'Fan's Favourite' in 2011 and 'Best Innovation' in 2005.
Origins
The festival had been held annually in the late summer since 2004, in a small country park called 'Robin Hill' on the Isle of Wight. The event was organized by Rob da Bank and was an offshoot of his Sunday Best record label and club nights. Creative Director and wife Josie da Bank and co founders / partners John Hughes, Ziggy Gilsenan and Ben Turner were also involved in organising the event.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bestival” is music festival. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bestival, music and festival, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “music festival” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2616359. Authority coordinates are 50.638, -2.211. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2017, 2018 and 2015.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
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Three-step research path
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bestival” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.