It’s a case of David and Goliath but one small Irish music festival has emerged as a clear winner in the Irish Festival Awards 2012, running away with four gongs in major categories. 

The results of the Festival Awards are just in revealing that Knockanstockan has stolen the prizes for ‘Best Small Festival’; ‘Best Lineup’; ‘Best Family Festival’ & ‘Social Responsibility Award’. 

More than 24,000 Irish music fans who attended festivals throughout Summer 2012 cast their votes in the 100% publicly-voted awards. 

Other main winners are Electric Picnic scooping the ‘Best Large Festival’ and ‘Greenest Festival’ Awards while Camden Crawl was bestowed with the ‘Best New Festival’ title. 

“The Irish Festival Awards were set up in 2007 to honour the people behind the scenes that make every Irish Summer such an eclectic celebration of music, art and performance,” said Awards Director, Cillian Stewart. 

“Smaller festivals are now weighed in various categories to give them a fair chance against the bigger events & this helped them win big in 2012 with Knockanstockan winning 4 of the categories.” 

 “We have really seen a swing too with music fans looking in a more detailed way at festivals’ pricing structure leading to a noticeable move away from the bigger events,” he said. 

“While the voting is now closed, fans are still in with a chance to win free tickets to every festival that scooped an award. All you have to do is like the Festival Awards’ Facebook page before the end of February to enter.” 

Results for Irish Festival Awards 2012 

Best Large Festival: Electric Picnic

Best Medium Festival: Rory Gallagher Tribute Festival

Best Small Festival: Knockanstockan

Greenest Festival: Electric Picnic

Best One Day Festival: Arthur’s Day

Best New Festival: Camden Crawl

Best Dance Festival: Life

Best Traditional Festival: Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann

Best Value: Street Performance World Championships

Best Street Spirit: St Patricks Festival Dublin

Best Headline Act: The Stone Roses

Best Rock Act: Foo Fighters

Best Dance Act: Hot Chip

Best Alternative Act: The Cure

Best Irish Act: Christy Moore

Best Lineup: Knockanstockan

Family Festival Award: Knockanstockan

Social Responsibility Award: Knockanstockan

Best Service: Vantastival

Best Toilets: *All I want is a proper loo! 

The Irish Festival Awards is brought to you by Cherrycool Promotions - the people behind the Castlepalooza Music & Arts Festival. Castlepalooza is therefore excluded from the awards in the interest of transparancy & fairness.