Small festivals under attack

[howard the oryx]

Hi People,

I gathered you festival-going folk may find this interesting, it seems a number of small festivals are having to cancel due to increasing costs and restrictions, something that has affected Glastonbury seriously over the years also. Please also support the little festivals (as Glastonbury was once) by showing up or at the very least joining the facebook group to keep Celtic Blue Rock (an awesome little festival)

Article:

http://www.safeconcerts.com/newsitem.asp?nurn=4483

Stop the council from stopping Celtic Blue Rock Facebook Group

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=1055...5518&v=wall

[guypjfreak]

i wish you and all small festivals all the best.

my son helps to run our local music festi in the park admittedly its only small but last year it nearly didnt happen and this year has only just been confirmed and all health and safety in this country has gone mad and this only a tiny thing ,you larger festis are being bullied by ex hippy's that have grown old.

[howard the oryx]

i wish you and all small festivals all the best.

my son helps to run our local music festi in the park admittedly its only small but last year it nearly didnt happen and this year has only just been confirmed and all health and safety in this country has gone mad and this only a tiny thing ,you larger festis are being bullied by ex hippy's that have grown old.

[Spindles]

There's so many great little free or inexpensive ones out there that are run by people who just love music and parties and it would be a real shame if we were to lose them.

[guypjfreak]

That is a really nice line.

[fraz]

Last year one of the bigger festival organisers tried to get Surrey Council to give them a licence so Guiflest (in Guildford) would not go ahead and they would host it instead it was only with massive local backing and social media pressure that this has not occured.

So fight on and also I think some local authorities and forces think there is more money than there is and want there share yes alot is handed over but just as much is spent on costs.

Guilfest is a nice family festival so if you live nearby check it out and realise just what there is in your vicinity.

Edited June 1, 2010 by fraz

[Boosh]

i agree in principle but strawberry fields was hardly a festival. more a collection of stalls, a stage nobody paid attention to and a large field of people taking drugs.

thats what it looked like to me anyway.

[Douzeper]

Was organiseing a "Rock fest" last year, the amount of hoops we had to jump through were indredible, the stress was nearly unbearable.

The Police in the end, put an end to it, it was only a small one day festival and the Police qouted us £65 per hour per man and would not tell us how many Police Officers they would need untill that day when they surveyed the site that morning.

I'm sure its the same with all festivals, but...... for those that don't realise.. the health and safety rules are incredible and its only the morning of the Festival that they write a certificate for you to go ahead after checking everything is in place. Scary times when you have invested a lot of money in something that could be cancelled at the last minute.

We plan to give it another go in 2011, but it seems to be getting harder by the year.

Local councils just don't seem to realise the business and money it can bring into an area, they are more concerned about ridiculous things, our main hurdle in our area was the local Christians. If we had of called it "The Chrisitian Rock Fest" it all would of been a lot easier and probably got tourist grants!

[MEGABOWL]

Consider me joined

[Medina]

(Deep breath)

As a Festival Organiser and a local authority Licensing Board member there's an awful lot I could say from both sides of the fence... but I'm so damn busy answering H&S queries from the authorities 'policing' my own festival that I just don't have the time right now.

So I'll just confine myself to saying...

Health & Safety IS important. That shouldn't be forgotten. But it is getting quite ridiculous the number of hassles and costs facing small festivals in particular. If the authorities want to stop a festival happening, for good reasons or bad, it is all too easy for them to do so.

Likewise a handful of local NIMBY protestors can make it nigh on impossible for a new festival to start-up.

The Event Safety Guide (the 'bible' for licensing authorities, emergency services and event organisers) is about to be re-written but it will not be all-embracing in future... it will only cover a limited number of topics leaving other subjects open to local interpretation.

And that will no doubt create even more problems for new festivals and small festivals...

Discuss!

[Ringo_Spar]

I'm sure its the same with all festivals, but...... for those that don't realise.. the health and safety rules are incredible and its only the morning of the Festival that they write a certificate for you to go ahead after checking everything is in place. Scary times when you have invested a lot of money in something that could be cancelled at the last minute.

[oniondan]

A blog post I did on this subject a while back... http://onionaudio.co.uk/blog/?p=33

[Guest Flip]

i agree in principle but strawberry fields was hardly a festival. more a collection of stalls, a stage nobody paid attention to and a large field of people taking drugs.

thats what it looked like to me anyway.

[Homer]

The problem is not being helped by the number of small festivals - such as Bloom in my case - that come along, cancel, then steal all their customers' hard earned money. I genuinely feel that this is eroding a lot of people's trust in smaller events and making them reluctant to buy tickets.

Even Glade, which seemed well established, went recently after all.

[nicktrow]

In his weekly email to fans, Eddy Temple Morris has a bit to say on this subject:

"But there was one thing on my mind before and after the gig. Glade festival. This was the weekend Glade would have been. I've played at almost every one since year one, I love it, and I miss it very much.

You probably heard the festival was cancelled but you may not know the inside story why. It was due to a massive rise in the cost of policing the event, imposed by Hampshire Police, from £29,000 last year to £175,000, an increase never justified to the promoters, nor based on any past incidents at the Glade. The increase was due to the insistence on a disproportionate level of policing for an event of its size, and also due to a new police chiefs directive that UK festivals are to be charged 'maximum overtime' for the police officers.

This left the Glade having to pay £55 an hour for a standard uniformed bobby - that's over £400 a day, more than most of the DJs playing there! - this despite the fact that they knew about the event eleven months in advance and had plenty of time to plan ahead for it and so have no reason to charge overtime rates.

The most worrying point, which has echoes of the Thatcherite clampdown on raves back in the day, is that this year the police have now reclassified music festivals to being 'serious risks to public safety' - in other words the same as a football match. This is astonishing. Unbelievable that anyone could seriously argue that thousands of like minded souls wanting a shared artistic experience could be the same as two huge gangs of opposing fans spoiling for a fight.

Interestingly the same 're-classification' has not been applied to events like Reading and Leeds, only to the non-corporate festivals, run by individuals, or collectives, who don't have the massive weight and legal teams the big boys do.

It is capitalism at work, and on that level, you can't blame the police, who do a brilliant job on the whole, while being underfunded and underappreciated. But unfortunately, by doing this, they are jeapordising our cultural heritage and depriving good people of something they thoroughly deserve, while depriving artists, musicians, actors, crew and support staff of the work they need in a seasonal industry. It's really very disappointing and I hope the police will reconsider this move, as they are hurting pro-police taxpayers, and that must surely go against the grain.

We must spread awareness of this issue, otherwise ticket prices will go through the roof, and the festival calendar will be homogenised, with only the big corporate-sponsored ones surviving, and all the lovely little ones, that make our festival scene so special in this country, all falling by the wayside. That would be awful.

Talk about it. Tweet about it. If you know somebody in the police force, talk to them, lobby and bring it home that we're on the same side here, we are citizens of a country we're proud of, with a music and arts culture that is the envy of the world, and we don't want that to be choked to death at the point of actual delivery.

The music and arts festival is a really important part of our landscape now. We've saved 6music. Now we have to turn our attention to this. It's just as important.

Eddy xx"

Edited July 21, 2010 by nicktrow

[Douzeper]

<!--quoteo(post=3306217:date=Jun 1 2010, 08:12 PM:name=Douzeper)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Douzeper @ Jun 1 2010, 08:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=3306217"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm sure its the same with all festivals, but...... for those that don't realise.. the health and safety rules are incredible and <b>its only the morning of the Festival that they write a certificate for you to go ahead after checking everything is in place. Scary times when you have invested a lot of money in something that could be cancelled at the last minute.</b><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

It's the only way it can be and it's the same for every festival, has to be.

Health & Safety's responsibiity is to ensure that the site and operations are safe for all who are attending, be they as punters or workers.

Until that site is in place then it can't be checked as being safe.

If you've invested a lot of money in something then you should have bargained for not having it cancelled at the last minute, i.e.: investing in the correct equipment and procedures that won't jeopardise your licence. Very, very few get cancelled at the last minute and those that do probably should be.

I'm not coming down on the side of the authorities, but the rules are the rules, like them or not. It's unfair on festivals that do all the right things if other festivals can take a lax approach and expect to get away with cutting corners.

The only campaign that festival organisers have on this matter is to at least have the same set of hoops that need to be jumped through regardless of their festival's location, which isn't the way things work currently.

[rivalschools.price]

i feel desperately sorry for the organisers of blue rock festival. i lived in pembrokeshire for a while and the mentality on events like this is always negative. obviously h+s is important but in blue rocks case the licencing commitee put everything in the way to make it impossible for the event to go ahead. a genuine licencing officers job would be to work together with the organiser to let him know what is needed to get the licence granted and give them plenty of time to put this together so the event could pass safely and licencing laws were adhered to.pembrokeshire licencing officers seemed to set out at the start to make sure the event got cancelled and all the doubt about the event had a negative affect on ticket sales and the organisers couldnt promote it properly.

[rivalschools.price]

ha ha.to give you an idea of what the blue rock organisers were up against, a landlord in pembrokeshire was in court this week to defend his licence.underage drinking? fights outside? drugs?

no,none of the above. the offical police statement in the local paper, 'police officers heard music,voices and laughter at 1.05am depite his licence stating that he could only serve until 12.30am'

desite being 100% correct in their statement and being perectly entitled to follow the letter of the law,it shows that the blue rock organisers deserve even more credit for managing to get a licence for the previous 7 years.

[Medina]

I have a lot of sympathy with other festival organisers who have experienced licensing problems. Yes, as others have said, it is sometimes the organiser's own fault and sometimes there are very good health & safety reasons why a festival should not go ahead. But not always.

Sometimes the organiser has done everything possible but still the licensing authority, police or fire authorities have made it impossible for an event to proceed. Take Glade's problem with police costs for example. And I'm staging a festival later this week where I'm having to work with exactly the same licensing authority and police officers as Glade!

I'd like to think I know a bit about Licensing as (wearing another 'hat') I also serve as a Licensing Board member on my own local authority. I'd say the vast majority of licensing officers, police, fire etc. are helpful to festival organisers and want to work with them to ensure festivals are safe events for people to attend. But the fact is that health and safety demands plus more frequent demands by the police for costs are making it increasingly difficult and expensive for small festivals to survive.

I suspect most festival-goers don't realise just how much time, effort and money has to be invested in meeting licensing demands. I've got 16 pages of licensing conditions to meet this week. And many events have even more than that!

[Rich BT]

27 pages for us Medina - solicitor bill of 10k for 2010 festival and 15k for 2009 festival.

[jamsam]

After what happened at Love Parade in Germany, i think we are all grateful for H&S, policing and security.

As a festival organiser i can agree on the huge stress that goes along with trying to get your event passed and certified but aslong as you are open and honest, explaining any problems and asking for help when you need it, H&S doesnt need to be scarey. Small festivals often come and go in different forms with different names untill they are established enough to stay and hold thier crowd but whats really interesting is the rise of private parties that charge you membership but give free tickets...i like the way organisers have looked for a loophole and are willing to use the loops to have a good time, but are they safe enough??

anyway, punters tickets ofr me all year this year !! ive really missed having a radio or being woken up at 5am by a policeman....hmmmm

[Rufus Gwertigan]

After what happened at Love Parade in Germany, i think we are all grateful for H&S, policing and security.

As a festival organiser i can agree on the huge stress that goes along with trying to get your event passed and certified but aslong as you are open and honest, explaining any problems and asking for help when you need it, H&S doesnt need to be scarey. Small festivals often come and go in different forms with different names untill they are established enough to stay and hold thier crowd but whats really interesting is the rise of private parties that charge you membership but give free tickets...i like the way organisers have looked for a loophole and are willing to use the loops to have a good time, but are they safe enough??

anyway, punters tickets ofr me all year this year !! ive really missed having a radio or being woken up at 5am by a policeman....hmmmm

[elli]

Can anyone tell me at what point a gathering of friends and music in a field becomes a small festival and needs to go though the hoops of H & S, police etc? Is it determined by the number of people on site?

[Rufus Gwertigan]

Can anyone tell me at what point a gathering of friends and music in a field becomes a small festival and needs to go though the hoops of H & S, police etc? Is it determined by the number of people on site?

[eFestivals]

What people do not realise is that H&S in this country is reactive. i.e. someone has been hurt in the past. (mainly. I know some isn't but it is based on reactive studies)

While that's the origins of H&S, it stopped being that a long time ago. Once all of the "it's happened in the past, we need to stop it happening again" things had been addressed, the very preservation of H&S staff at the level they'd grown to required them to start to find new things, sometimes verging on the ridiculous.

For example: there was one year at GuilFest where its licence stipulated that to buy alcohol from the bar each over-18 person had to be wristbanded at the entrance gate - no wristband, no sale.

Now, while someone aged (say) 22 might look possibly under-18, a 50 year old person never looks under-18 - so why do they need to be wristbanded?

And ultimately, anyone under-18 who might have been challenged about their age would have brought ID anyway - so they'd have used that to get wristbanded and so they'd have been no change in who got served.

Yet doing this stupid idea got H&S to justify their existence for another year.