Marrapalooza is a community endeavour and we want to make our festival the most inclusive and boundary breaking in the North East of England.

We do this in a number of ways:

AFFORDABILITY:
Marrapalooza always has a free stage and we also use a system of selling ‘solidarity tier’ tickets to help us subsidise offering people on low incomes a cheaper ticket option.

REGIONAL INEQUALITY:
Parts of the North East are incredibly neglected in terms of opportunities for music. We have a partnership with Sonic Futures to bring bands from these areas to Marrapalooza.

DISABILITY:
Each year we host the Mary Greaves stage, named after the legendary North East disability campaigner. This stage is ran and curated by Future Collaborations a disability-ran, inclusive music festival.

REFUGEE INCLUSIVITY:
Each year we host the Ida and Louise Cook stage, named after two North East sisters who helped transport refugees from Nazi Germany. This stage is curated to be reflective of North East refugee communities and has booked artists of Ukranian, Palestinian, Congolese, Roma and south asian heritage.

DIVERSITY:
Our festival has a long history of platforming LGBTQ+, non-white artists and women and providing these artists prominent headline performance slots.

in 2026:

• 40% of performers identified as women, including headliners Jasmine 4.t. and Soak.

• 23% of performers identified as LGBTQ

• 14% of artists were led by someone of non-white european ethnic heritage