Festival food tent raised £250K for charity

Oxfordshire's largest music festival has revealed that it raised £250,000 for charity in 2025, just through profits from its food tent.

Truck Festival, which just wrapped up its 2026 edition at Hill Farm in Steventon, celebrated its biggest year yet over the weekend.

Apart from entertainment, the event also has a funding initiative with multiple streams in support of local charities.

Festival coordinator Jasmine Dunston said the money raised through their Feel Good Food Hall last year had contributed to the Truck in the Community initiative reaching £1m since 2014.

The festival says it is "committed to promoting, supporting and engaging with the local community of Steventon and the wider Oxfordshire area".

"Our Feel Good Food Hall is run by local people and we've got 16 different stalls and all profits go back to hyper local charities," Dunston said.

One of them is Style Acre, based in Wallingford, which provides living and day opportunities to people with a learning disability and autism.

"Some of them come down to site, they work at the store and then get to see the fruition of their hard work as well because they get supported by that," Dunston added.

She said the Truck Trust supported groups and charities with small grants, and that they had given out £24,000 in different initiatives last year.

"We were really lucky to go to the Abingdon Music Centre to help the Music Flood Orchestra which is built up of 300 children from local primary schools and they get to play this massive orchestral performance."

Style Acre said it was their fourth year at the festival and their "biggest fundraising event of the year"

Thirty-nine of their volunteers attended, including 14 people they support working over the weekend.

"It is hard work but so much fun for everyone and such an amazing opportunity for the people we support to be involved in and to experience the festival," said fundraising and marketing manager Anne-Marie Hicks.

"A wonderful weekend, that has created lasting memories, and which has raised a significant amount of money that will make a huge difference to lives of the people we support."

Andy Boon runs the 24 Hour Tea Tent, which raises vital funds for Ronald McDonald House Oxford (RMH Oxford) for free accommodation for families with children in hospital.

He said they had made just over £10,000 in 2025 and it "has increased year on year".

"[Owner Alan Binning] gave me the charity of choice and I picked RMH because it means so much to me and my wife and our family," he said.

His middle child was born with congenital heart defect and had to undergo major surgeries at just days old.

"We would have had to travel from our house in Milton to Oxford every day or pay for a bed and breakfast," Boon said.

"But then we were handed the keys to a room at RMH with no idea what was going on and all of a sudden, we're a few minutes away from our very sick baby, and able to just contain ourselves and get a grip on it."

He described the opportunity to support the charity as "absolutely phenomenal".

"Here we are, 15 years on, still trucking."