Last week I was sent a link to a social media post about a news article that caught my attention. A blog post called for the popular heavy music festival, Inkcarceration, to be effectively evicted from Mansfield.
Inkcarceration has sold out five straight years, creates roughly $10 million in annual economic impact, and attracted 90,000 fans in 2025. In the context of all this, the festival barely registers a blip of trouble with local law enforcement.
We know this because we’ve covered the festival in person for years.
In case you missed it, the anonymous original post referenced a letter signed by 9 pastors which was subsequently sent to 140 faith leaders in and around Richland County. Both the letter and the blog post called for “disbanding” the festival and pointed to a “transformation” of the Ohio State Reformatory “to the demonic.”
It’s a long letter.
The authors list 15 specific criminal incidents at Inkcarceration over seven years which they claim went unreported by local media. Publicly available attendance data puts the total crowd during those years at around 450,000.
Put those numbers into context and that’s hardly a crime wave. It’s barely a crime ripple.
Yet, the end goal of this group seems to be to close Mansfield to hundreds of thousands of overwhelmingly peaceful and law-abiding festival-goers.
Source Media Properties will fight to defend the clergy’s right to express their opinion, but I think what they’re missing is the experience of the other 449,885 attendees.
Heavy metal isn’t for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong
Our home is awash in black concert t-shirts and earplugs.
In the last decade I’ve been to dozens of heavy music shows with my eldest daughter, who is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. Ellie has been an artist and a fan of heavy music for as long as I can remember, first discovering a few albums in my collection and then branching out on her own.
It’s been my absolute privilege to have seen Slayer, Opeth and Lamb of God twice, Cradle of Filth at the House of Blues, Tribulation at the Agora, and countless basement and house shows all over Mansfield. That’s taken place after dozens of road trips that created thousands of memories.
She would tell you herself, it’s not always easy to make friends when you’re not a normie.
“You have to find your people. These are my people,” she said to me today.
I’ve never seen Ellie more relaxed and at home than when she was in the front row at Divebomb’s farewell show at the Electric Company a couple of winters ago. She was safe, accepted and experiencing the kind of transcendental departure only live music can deliver.
Yes, the mosh pit at a metal show looks intimidating. The battle vests, corpse paint, and relentless blast beats are a little like attending a Halloween party inside a running jet engine.
It’s truly not for everyone.
But here’s the thing: The deep community that people feel at these shows is real. The prioritization of safety and obligation to self-police is palpable.
There’s an innate “duty of care” atmosphere that persists inside those mosh pits where one person picks up the other the moment someone falls.
I’ve observed this to be especially true for young women, who are continuously looked after, lifted up and protected from accidental harm by the artists and other attendees. My daughters can attest to this scene.
Tolerance is Mansfield’s heavy metal superpower
Through our work at The Source over the years, we’ve hosted or met hundreds of out-of-town guests visiting Mansfield. They’ve come from all over America and even the world.
Their belief systems, viewpoints and life experiences could not have been more varied or diverse, but on one subject they were united.
“Mansfield is so welcoming! I can’t believe how kind and hospitable everyone has been to me since I’ve been here. You have a wonderful community. We feel right at home.”
What I understood them to say was that Mansfield might not be for everyone, but it was for anyone who wanted to be our neighbor.
That’s a pretty damn cool Yelp review.
The world has enough purity tests. We have enough division. We have enough finger-pointing and judgment.
Inkcarceration is a place where tolerance and community are the most valuable thing. It’s not for everyone, but we should be proud Mansfield plays host to a festival where anyone from anywhere can find a rock-and-roll respite from the day-to-day grind.
Why on earth would a community known for its welcoming and hospitable nature slam the door on 90,000 visitors every summer?
Jay Allred has been the publisher of Source Media Properties for 12 years and is the proud father of two daughters who have spent their entire lives in Mansfield.