Alt-Fest's mission to bring democracy to the fields

We all love festivals, but they're not without their bugbears, be it room-temperature lager (I'm sorry, it's how much a pint?), baffling lineup decisions (oh look, Imagine Dragons), or noxious shit-silos that have been sadistically mislabeled as 'toilets' (the horror, the horror). But what if you, Joe Q Punter, actually had a say in all those things? What if you were consulted on everything from the bands on the bill, to the price of a beer, to the number of shower stalls onsite? That, in a nutshell, is the idea behind Alt-Fest, the fledgeling goth-and-metal event which made waves last year when its Kickstarter campaign raised over £60,000 (more than twice its initial target) and resulted in 'crowd-led' becoming the festival buzzword du jour.

Born out of organiser Dominic Void's disillusionment with "generic" festival experiences, where the extent of crowd participation ran to "looking at a lineup and deciding whether or not to buy a ticket," Alt-Fest is an experiment in democracy. It's not crowd-funded as such (the Kickstarter money still amounts to chump change when it comes to staging an event of this size) but the price of your pledge buys much more than a token T-shirt or a bumper sticker. As Void explains, "we went out and asked people about all aspects of the event – what facilities should be onsite, which bands they wanted to see, what they didn't like about other festivals – be it the toilets, or long walks from the car park – and used that to form the festival." Forget 'boutique' festivals; this is the world's first bespoke festival.

It's a brilliant concept, and as Metallica's decision to play a fan-chosen setlist at this year's Sonisphere demonstrates, there's a growing trend towards greater audience participation and making these sorts of shows feel unique. At Alt-Fest itself, Peter Hook is inviting fans to vote on which songs he should play, while The Damned are promising a set of rarities and a 'people's choice' track, to be chosen through social media. Tellingly, it was the crowd-led angle that convinced headliner Marilyn Manson to make his sole UK appearance of 2014 at Alt-Fest – a major coup for a mid-sized event in its inaugural year. "We put a number of polls online, and he was the artist most people wanted to play the main stage," says Void. "When we approached his agent, we were told that he wouldn't be doing any shows at all this year, so we came back and said, 'OK, how do we get him to do just one date?' It turned out that when his agent discussed it with him, he really liked the ethos of the festival and wanted to get behind it."

Time will tell if crowd-led festivals are a passing fad or the way of the future. If it finally convinces Michael Eavis to book Prince, however, you can count us in.

Alt-Fest takes place 15-17 August at Boughton Estate, Kettering, Northamptonshire