About
The Parachute Music Festival attracts around 25,000 people each year. The largest crowd came in 2007, with 27,813 attendees. Most people who attend stay on-site in tents and caravans, and a large village area supplies food, amenities and band merchandise.
Bands apply to play at Parachute Festival which gives an opportunity for people to get their music heard. Bands applying must have a pastoral reference, that is a reference from a church leader. While local bands from New Zealand apply, Parachute receives applications from all over the world. Parachute Music also invites a number of headline artists each year to perform at the festival. Around 100 bands from many different genres play at Parachute each year.
The festival is aimed at a wide demographic ranging from families to teenagers. It is classified as a non-denominational Christian event, with enforced bans on drugs or alcohol and unmarried couples being discouraged from tenting together. However, a large percentage of non-Christian people do attend.
Because Parachute is a non-denominational Christian festival, events such as Catholic Mass and Anglican Eucharist take place over the weekend.
The Festival is covered by most New Zealand media and is a well known event of the New Zealand summer. It has also been supported by and has been in partnerships with a number of businesses and organisations - Some examples are Coca-Cola, Sanitarium, V, Pepsi, Vodafone and The NZ Police.
Parachute is often in partnerships with charities, for example World Vision. Parachute Music have been working with World Vision since 2006 to sponsor a village in Rwanda called Tubehoneza. Over the last five festivals, festival-goers have donated $265,000 to the area. This money has been used to build five water tanks, three classrooms, a maternity unit and a health centre for Tubehoneza. Also through the festival 1,900 children have been sponsored.
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