Villages

The camping areas at EMF contain a number of villages. You can find a list of them here

What is a Village?

A village is a group of friends, like minded people, colleagues or even families. Maybe your village is a collection of sub villages, or maybe it’s just your hackerspace. We also see villages 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.

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.

What can we do as a Village?

Making intersecting tetrahedra at the Maths Village in 2018

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! This year, we're also designating some villages as Workshop Villages, who will be provided with a workshop tent to run their own workshops and host others.

Some of our favourite village activities from previous years include:

• Ring Making Workshop
• Obscurecon
• Hardware Hacking Village
• Personal Introduction to FPGA programming
• Launching High Altitude Balloons

We're here to help

You're welcome to run events 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.

There is also limited funding available for villages that want to put on content. Please Email the Village People and we will be very happy to discuss anything you might come up with!

Register a Village

Sign up with the village registration form on the main website!

The details you input won't be final - the form can be edited in future - if you're struggling for details, please input speculative numbers and refine them later once ticket sales are closed, or once you've discussed it with us.

You can see Registered Villages on the main website.

The Village People plan to be more involved in the placing and layout of villages this year to minimise collisions and disagreements! Once we've finalised the list of which villages will be hosting workshops, we'll be in touch to arrange details - we'll need to know where on site you'll be situated so we can set up your tent before you arrive, and have a rough idea of your timetable/plans to coordinate with the Content team.

We'd very much appreciate it if you could think ahead of time and consider these things the registration form asks:

• The area your village will need in m², and provide us a realistic estimate so we can place you!
  • The number of attendees will influence area
  • If your attendees intend to camp at your village or away from it will influence area
  • Structures you plan to bring will impact how big your village is - tell us their area!
• If you will be noisy or quiet, and what hours you'll be loud at so we can place you in quiet/noisy areas
• If you want to do anything spectacular or out the ordinary - just get in touch and we can make it happen

Being a Good Village

We're compiling a guide of what makes a good village, based on our past experience!

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!

There's more information about villages on the EMF Villages about page.