Hannah Saunder is the founder and creator of the family rave concept Big Fish, Little Fish.

Since 2013 Big Fish Little Fish have brought raving to the family massive, since March their party’s have gone virtual and managed to get into +200K households.

Hannah introduced us to her Fish world and how we can become a part of her party community.

I came up with the idea of a family rave when I took voluntary redundancy from my high-flying civil service career (after 22 years!) and was taking care of my then two young children. I was going to a lot of parent and child groups - which were nice but dull - but also still going to music festivals with my family. My daughter's first Glastonbury she was 4months old. I noticed how much we ALL loved festivals - something for adults and children to really enjoy together as a family. But there wasn't anything else like that outside of festivals. 'Family entertainment' was all about entertaining children with bored adults looking on or taking the kids to a nice family Sunday lunch which was really for grown-ups to enjoy. I needed to earn a living and so came up with the idea of creating the thing I wanted to take my own family to - the family rave. I'm a lifelong clubber and fan of dance music, so I took inspiration from the dancefloor and festivals and set out to make something that brought that sense of fun, freedom, and unity to everyone who attended. Adults and children both having a good time, in the same space, at the same time. The heart of the event is the live DJ - with bubbles, foam, giant balloons,

and visual effects over the dancefloor - but there is also a multi-activity craft area and baby chill space for the littlest ones - plus of course a bar!

I started by telling everyone I knew about my plan - effectively embarrassing myself into HAVING to do it. One of my online Mum friends came forward and asked to help with communications and various mates offered their advice and help - everything from financial record keeping to DJ contacts. Finding a venue was tricky - contacting pubs and clubs and suggesting I run a 'family rave' in their premises was mostly just met with blank stares but eventually, I doorstepped a new venue that opened at the end of my road in Brixton and convinced them to give it a go. We then started telling people about the date -13th July - we gave out flyers everywhere. Shops, playgroups, on the bus.  On the day we set up the venue using furniture, rugs, and play equipment from my own house and my friends acted as stewards. I had one friend hand painting a backdrop until 4 am in my back garden under stage lights. Over 300 people turned up. It was a rip-roaring success and gained a glowing two-page review in the Evening Standard and a page in Time Out! The tickets to the next two events sold out immediately.

We started doing them monthly and within 3 months expanded to a second venue in North London (I found the venue armed with my press cuttings). Then 3 months later a third venue in East London and we traveled to a festival in Coventry to run one there. Venues started contacting me - the Royal Festival Hall, Museum of London, and National Gallery all held one and we developed a significant fan base on social media. 

Two years in, one of our fans left London for Devon and asked if we would run one down there - it was too far but I suggested he run them instead. He accepted and so our network of local BFLF crews started up. We now have teams all over the UK, Ireland, and Australia and are about to start in New Zealand too.

Seven years in and we (usually) now run 150 events a year across the world and have played everywhere from fabric to the V&A Museum, Glastonbury Festival to Coventry Cathedral plus Inverness, Cardiff Castle, The Big Weekend, Melbourne Music Week, Athens Festival, and on a canal. We have had over 270 DJs play and 500,000 people attend our events.

We aim for young families - with children aged 0-8 years - but all are welcome. We have a wide demographic but usually, the parents are interested in dance music and love the events because it is something families can enjoy together. We have a strong inclusive ethos - we feel everyone has the right to a good time - and have played many Pride events as well as hosting Gingerbread groups (supporting single parents) and Out With The Family socials.  We have worked with venues to improve accessibility for those with mobility issues and allow children with sensory disorders in early to events to help with their enjoyment. We have also given our support to Black Lives Matter and promoted helpful material for parents such as ‘Bringing Up Race: How to Raise A Kind Child In A PrejudicedWorld’ by Uju Asika. We aim to give ALL families a great place to enjoy themselves together.

 Since March we have been unable to run events. We postponed all events from early March but I knew, as we went into Lockdown, that there were thousands of disappointed families who had been due to attend one of our Mothers’ Day raves. So I decided we’d take them online. I spent the Wednesday and Thursday working out how I could do it, then Friday trying to get the tech to work. When I was happy that I could at least get something happening, we announced on Saturday evening that Big Fish Little Fish would be running the world’s first virtual family rave from my kitchen the next day.  I am not a DJ but have all the kit. I put the virtual event on Facebook and went to bed. I woke the next day to find it had gone viral and we had over 70k people marked as attending the event. We had around 250k people watch the first Kitchen Rave - my DJing debut - and I ended up featured on Sky News internationally and The Mirror. Since then we have run the free Kitchen Raves every Sunday, over 600,000 households have joined in and our Facebook followers have increased 30%. Our YouTube subscribers have increased 1000% and the audio mixes from the sets have charted high in Mixcloud. The free raves have given families a real sense of fun and connection. One man cried because ‘it was the first time he had felt joy in weeks’ and feedback has been wonderful. We’ve had different DJs every week, been part of virtual festivals for Camp Bestival, Barefoot, Greenpeace, Belladrum, Pride, and even managed to stream from inside a museum - Horniman Museum - to celebrate its reopening.

 We intend to carry on running the weekly Kitchen Raves until we can run regular events as a way to keep connected with our audience as well as supporting our venues. All our postponed events are now moved into 2021 and we’ve already been booked for several festivals and new venues in 2021 too.  We continue to look for opportunities to run viable, covid safe events and the ongoing interaction from our wonderful fans means we are staying positive about the future.

We will dance together again - rave on!

More info about Big Fish Little Fish on:

Website:  www.bigfishlittlefishevents.com

 Facebook/bigfishlittlefishevents 

Twitter/IG: @BFLFEvents