Reflections from Boardmasters 2025: Emmaus Events Behind the Scenes of One of the UK’s Biggest Festivals

Earlier this month, thousands of festivalgoers descended on Newquay, Cornwall for Boardmasters 2025, the UK’s largest surf and music festival, held across Watergate Bay and Fistral Beach.

While the headliners took centre stage, teams behind the scenes were hard at work ensuring that safety, welfare, and operational readiness remained at the heart of the experience. Among them was Emmaus Events, working in collaboration with multi-disciplinary partners to support key safeguarding and pre-event planning activity.

In the week leading up to the festival, Dawn Grant, Managing Director of Emmaus Events, was on-site supporting operational readiness across safeguarding briefings, welfare planning, control room coordination, and command structure checks.

With decades of experience in policing and event safeguarding, Dawn played an active role in aligning multi-agency teams and supporting the creation of trauma-aware environments from day one.

Pre-event days like these are where the real groundwork happens,” Dawn reflects. “Strong partnerships, clear communication, and detailed planning are what set the tone for everything that follows.

Emmaus is proud to have played a part in shaping a safe, well-coordinated experience at such a large and high-profile event and to continue working alongside festivals, venues, and event operators to embed safeguarding and welfare leadership at every level.

The experience at Boardmasters reinforces the value of early involvement, embedded support, and operational leadership. These principles underpin the Emmaus Safe Hub for Events, which goes live soon  and is freely accessible.

If your team is preparing for an event and looking for practical tools, templates, and sector-specific guidance on safeguarding and welfare, the Emmaus Safe Hub is designed to help.