Villages

A village is a group of friends, like-minded people, colleagues or even families camping together at EMF. Maybe your village is a collection of sub villages, or maybe it’s just your hackerspace. A village can be based around themes, shared passions and existing communities - great places in the past have been the Maths village, the HAB Village and groups like Milliways and the Scottish Consulate. You can find the list of currently registered villages for EMF 2024 at emfcamp.org/villages/2024.

If there is a village based around something you are interested in, then you should definitely visit that village during the event to see what's going on. Or you could even join that village to help make more things go on. If there's not a village based around your interests, then you can start your own village and others will probably join you.

There is no requirement to be part of a village, so if you'd rather camp on your own and just visit some villages this is fine.

If you're planning to bring something especially big or in need of lots of power to your village, please let us know beforehand so we can provide you with what you need.

Register a Village

By registering your village at emfcamp.org/villages/register, you'll be making the Village People aware of the fact you plan to arrive, and how much space you're likely to need, and you'll allow us to get in touch to discuss how we can support your plans and activities at the event.

Once you've registered a village, we encourage you to create a page on the EMF 2024 wiki including information about your village and who people should talk to if they want to join you. You can then edit your village at emfcamp.org/villages/register and set this as your URL so it is linked to in the list of villages.

What can we do as a village?

Villages are great as you can share ideas, equipment and space! The sharing doesn’t stop there - it lets you share resources too. You can come up with a cooking and cleaning rota as a group to reduce waste, make the camp cheaper and interrupt your day with a change of activity. Some people spend all their time cooking for others!

Maybe you are working on a group project and want to show off the final result, or you want to spend the weekend building something. Doing this as a village is good fun, and you often find that new friends will appear to share their ideas, opinions and time with you.

Some villages bring pre-made games and activities for other people to take part in, and some run events and parties during the weekend! Some of our favourite village activities from previous years include:

Barbot: a cocktail-making robot build by Nottingham Hackspace
Karaoke nights hosted in the Scottish Consulate tent
The Maths Village with a drop-in tent full of mathematical puzzles and activities
Demoscene competitions at Field-FX
Drop-in board game sessions

More generally, villages run all kinds of content - technical presentations or lectures, skill shares, drop-in sessions, Q&As, roundtables or informal 'jam' sessions (not necessarily musical!). Activities can be open to all EMF attendees or private for the village, and we'll circulate details to registered villages of how to add your content to the main schedule.

A selection of villages will be workshop villages, and will run and host workshops that any attendee can propose via the CfP alongside content organised by members of the village. These have already been selected and designated, and all Workshop Village content will be listed in the main programme.

If you have any questions about workshop villages or hosting content, you can email the Village People.

The Village People

The Village People are available to support making things happen in your village. If you have a cool idea, but need help with planning or logistics of doing things on site, please contact us beforehand. The earlier you let us know your plans, the better we can help you. You can contact us by emailing villages@emfcamp.org and we will be very happy to discuss anything you might come up with!

Village Furniture

To make things easier for villages, we will offer the opportunity to book a marquee and furniture through us, which will be set up and ready for when you arrive on site. Details of how to book these will be announced nearer to the event.

We're happy for you to bring your own tents and furniture for being social in and cooking in. We ask that you remove everything you’ve brought at the end of the event - it’s not fair on our volunteers to have to tidy them up, and it’s also bad for the environment.

Planning Your Village

When planning your village and setting up your tents once you arrive, you will probably want to set up a space to act as your 'village square' where you can get together, show off your toys, and run any workshops or other events you're planning. With the unreliability of British weather, we recommend that this area is covered - it can get really sunny and really wet at our site. We’d rather neither you were sunburned nor your laptop flooded. The village team would really appreciate it if you planned this ahead of the event and could tell us the area of your planned square, so we can lay out the site and get you the best location possible!

While EMF provides a great set of food vendors, it may be easier or cheaper for you to get together and cook. Some villages cook for upwards of 100 people each meal, but there’s no reason it can’t just be 5 people. Think about the things you’ll need - a stove, pots & pans, plates/bowls, cutlery and food. We’d really appreciate it if you brought reusable plates and cutlery, and low-packaging food. This helps reduce our waste footprint and helps the environment.

A good neighbour works with those around them so everyone has the best possible event. This includes understanding the area you are camping in and compromising with those nearby! We have both quiet and noisy camping areas. If you intend to have friends over working, partying and enjoying each other’s company until the wee hours, we’d ask that you place yourself in the noisy area.

It’s great if you can share with your neighbours too - maybe you want to group 3-4 villages together into a common theme, and share resources. This could be cooking, hardware or other items. You can get in touch with your neighbours ahead of the event and see if they want to do anything with you - it could be a shared event, or helping with their cooking in exchange for food!