Firestarter Festival, a local summer camp for high-school aged teens, is celebrating its twentieth year in July.
 
The non-profit event started in Ramsey in 1997. Since then, it has entertained more than 2,000 young people, pitched over 900 tents, and filled and thrown over 100,000 water balloons. To make all of that happen, the festival organisers estimate that volunteers have given around 95,000 hours of time – that’s almost 11 years of continuous work.
 
This year’s event is being held at Ardwhallan Outdoor Education Centre, West Baldwin, in the first week of the summer holidays. It is open to anyone currently attending high school and features camping, adventure activities such as coasteering and kayaking, games, talent shows, entertainment, and an infamous annual ‘water-war’ in which several thousand water bombs are thrown every minute. The twentieth anniversary is set to be marked by the biggest water-war in the event’s history.
 
Festival Manager Tommy Harrison has worked on the event since its inception and attributes its longevity to the freedom it gives to its young people. He commented: “It’s strange to think the festival has been running for two decades. We’re actually reaching a place now where some of the youths attending could be the kids of people that attended the first festivals twenty years ago, which is amazing! Over the years it has changed quite a lot but I think the thing which has always been the same and which gives it a sort of eternal appeal is that we give the youth a lot of freedom. There’s a lot to do, but everything is optional.”
 
The event’s mantra of freedom even runs so far as to offer an on-site 24 hour cafe, because the ‘revellers’ aren’t required to go to bed if they don’t want to. Tommy, a veteran youth worker, feels this is important because, “When you give a young person choices, it involves also giving them a certain amount of respect, which is something teenagers often feel they don’t get enough of. Sometimes that means trying to stay up all night, but not many succeed after a full day of hiking, wrestling in giant sumo suits, or conquering the assault course!”
 
The leadership team and volunteers are drawn primarily from a mixture of the Island’s Christian churches and the festival is overseen by Scripture Union Ministries Trust (SUMT). The event is non-denominational and inclusive, however, so most of the youths who attend are not affiliated with a religion or church.
 
Tickets are available from www.firestarter.im and cost ?65 per youth for four days, all meals and activities included.
 
Photo - The 2016 revellers after last year’s ‘water war’.