Soundtracking a childhood: How Kaleidoscope has become a summer staple for my family

Five years after its debut, Kaleidoscope has become Ireland's leading family music festival. From Pete Tong and Natasha Bedingfield to flushable toilets, glamping and activities for every age

Ireland’s largest summer family festival came alive and included Natasha Bedingfield, Pete Tong Ibiza Classics, and The Saw Doctors alongside homegrown Irish talent and family entertainment. Picture: Marc O'Sullivan

At this year’s Kaleidoscope — Ireland’s largest family music festival — the biggest talking point wasn’t Natasha Bedingfield, Pete Tong, The Saw Doctors, or the other nostalgia-hued main stage line-ups. It wasn’t Dustin the Turkey’s addition to the bill as ‘festival supervisor’ either.

No, it was the flushable toilets that had everyone talking.

It’s easy to stick a toilet roll into your backpack when you’re heading off to a music festival. It’s not quite so straightforward when you are dragging kids into a mud-strewn Portaloo.

The team behind Ireland’s biggest family music festival took the feedback of 1,500 parents last year — and invested in flushable facilities across the grounds of Russborough House. Cleaning crews were permanently on hand, ready to replenish toilet roll.

Other changes included a camp kitchen area, with BBQs onsite for cooking (a godsend for parents when a food truck burger comes in at €13), plus quiet camping — areas with a strict 11pm curfew.

The main stage at Kaleidoscope Picture: Marc O'Sullivan

When it comes to festivals for families, it’s the simple things that matter most.

Before Kaleidoscope, parents who wanted their kids to experience a music festival had to bring their toddlers along to their own grown-up affairs, and hope for the best.

In 2019, Kaleidoscope changed everything. First created by FUEL, the creative minds behind Beyond the Pale and Wellfest, and now partnered with Festival Republic, Live Nation, and MCD, the people behind Electric Picnic, bring us festival cool for families. In these fields and marquees, it is the kids that take centre stage.

It’s a fully fledged festival experience that families can share together.

Arriving at Kaleidoscope, it is like landing at EP — the same show- stopping main stage, funky circus big tops, cool food trucks, neon, eye-catching branding.

Except here there’s also a slip-and-slide inflatable.

The inflatable slip-and-slide at Kaleidoscope

Strolling through the festival fields, there’s storytelling, face painting, big wheels, bumper cars, and marching bands. Children and families amble around the fields, wandering into circus shows, creative workshops, and science and nature zones.

There are treehouse building workshops from Dermot Bannon, science experiments with Mark the Science Guy, workshops with the Gaiety School of Acting and the Circus Factory.

We potter around Wonderland and discover the National Gallery of Ireland’s workshop. Inspired by Vermeer’s Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid, kids are shown how to create letter locks — creating an envelope from paper, designing their own seal, and drawing their memories of the festival inside. We while away an hour there with markers, scissors, and glue.

Dermot Bannon poses for a photo with festival goers at his treehouse building workshop

Right next door there’s the option of an alpaca walk, and over at the Scrumdiddlyumptious Tent, kids try their hands at cupcake decorating.

All that, and we haven’t even touched on the main event — the music.

On the main stage, Natasha Bedingfield topped the billing on Friday night.

Natasha Bedingfield performs at Kaleidoscope Picture: Marc O'Sullivan

On Saturday, Dustin warmed up the crowd with a DJ set ahead of Pete Tong’s Ibiza classics. The Radio 1 DJ performed with guest vocalists and his Essential Orchestra.

Merging dance anthems with orchestral strains, Tong brought club tracks to life for a sensational 90 minutes. With pure rave energy, parents and children danced to reimagined versions of Let Me Be Your Fantasy and Sing It Back, with full strings and percussion.

The production was flawless, the lighting catching each beat. Tong mixed the tracks from a height, with the full orchestra below him, taking centre stage.

On Saturday, Dustin warmed up the crowd with a DJ set ahead of Pete Tong’s Ibiza classics. Picture: Marc O'Sullivan

In the neighbouring tent, Zozimus, the bucket hats were out for an Oasis tribute act, channelling pure Liam Gallagher energy.

All the while, up at Ickle Big Top, Inside Out was streaming on a big screen. Earlier in the day, one marquee showed the Cork-Galway match on the big screen.

This is the joy of Kaleidoscope, there’s something for everyone. Dance fused with a classic orchestra, Britpop, movies or just a ride on the merry-go-rounds — it’s all there for the taking.

There’s downtime too.

We wake on Sunday morning to music that sounds faintly like a sound bath — it turns out there’s yoga on the front lawn. A stone’s throw away, there’s a cartoon marathon on the big screen.

Families with portable soccer nets mess around with balls, others have hurleys to practise their pucks. There’s something idyllic about it all as you meander your way through the grounds.

It’s our fifth year at Kaleidoscope – we were there at the very first one in 2019. (We miss the old access through the woodland at Russborough in those early years – these days the festival is confined to one ambling stretch of field.) There were the lost Covid years, and for some reason we just can’t recall, we weren’t there the year Nile Rodgers headlined.

A few missed summers aside, the kids, we realise, have grown up at Kaleidoscope – videos on our phones capture them dancing at their first ever concert, chasing giant bubbles through the fields.

We find ourselves every bit as nostalgic for our growing kids as we are about the 90s and noughties-fuelled line-up.

This year, the kids older, we decide it’s time to make a change and book the glamping for the first time.

Glamping tents at Kaleidoscope

It’s a game changer. While putting up the tent and rushing for the main stage has become a fun Kaleidoscope rite of passage for many families, there’s something very sweet about arriving without so much as a sleeping bag and checking into a glamping bell tent complete with air mattresses and bed linen. Cosy, funky mats give another layer of luxury.

Yippee Tents (yippeetents.co.uk) provide glamping for festivals across Ireland and Britain, and their experience shines through. In this boutique camping area there are also designated showers and toilets. Flushable, of course.

Parents talked — and Kaleidoscope listened. Who knows what will be waiting for us in 2027.