UK’s longest-running impartial pageant Towersey to finish after 60 years as a result of “financial challenges”

Operators for Towersey Pageant – the UK’s longest-running impartial music pageant – have confirmed that the 2024 version can be its final as a result of spiralling prices.

The pageant was initially based in 1965 by Denis Manners MBE, and arrived 5 years earlier than the enduring Glastonbury pageant was based. Organisers have now confirmed that after 60 years, it is going to be coming to a everlasting finish as a result of exterior pressures and monetary pressure.

The ultimate installment will happen this summer season, and can be held at Buckinghamshire’s Claydon Property between August 23 and 26.

Artists lined-up for 2024 embody Billy Bragg, The Staves, Tide Strains, Seth Lakeman and Pokey Lafarge.

Information that the pageant could be closing after this 12 months’s version was shared by two of Manners’ grandchildren –  Mary Hodson and Joe Heap – who now run the occasion as co-directors.

“It’s with the heaviest of hearts that we additionally ship this message. Like so many different impartial and grassroots festivals, Towersey is dealing with the very unhappy prospect of ending after this 12 months’s pageant, our sixtieth 12 months,” they wrote (through Access All Areas).

“We have now labored extremely arduous over the previous few years to attempt to deliver Towersey again to monetary stability. The pandemic wiped all our again up and altered the face of festivals throughout the business. Getting back from this and the financial challenges we’ve all felt since then has been all however not possible. With out funding partnerships or a elementary change to the character of the pageant, now we have concluded that we should bow out after this 12 months.

“We’re pleased with what we’ve achieved with Towersey and the huge contributions we’ve made over time to charities, native causes, tourism, and rising artists. Extra importantly, we consider festivals like Towersey are essential for creating higher communities and societies and for locating hope and humanity in an in any other case difficult world.”

The assertion concluded: “We’ll proceed to struggle, and endeavour to discover a means of constant to understand the hopes and goals of our grandparents and founders, however it won’t be by means of Towersey Pageant anymore.”

The information arrives simply days after it was reported that 40 UK festivals have now been cancelled for this summer season, and over 170 have disappeared over the previous 5 years.

The brand new figures have been shared by the Affiliation of Unbiased Festivals (AIF) final week – the UK’s main not-for-profit pageant commerce affiliation, which represents the pursuits of 202 UK music festivals, starting from 500 to 80,000 capability.

CEO of AIF John Rostron has since shared an announcement in regards to the lack of Towersy Pageant.

“Towersy Pageant is an establishment within the UK’s impartial pageant sector. The truth that it has no selection however to make this 12 months’s version its final after 60 profitable years demonstrates that even probably the most established occasions are struggling within the present local weather,” it learn.

“Only a few festivals are proof against the pressures positioned upon promoters as a result of unpredictable and excessive provide chain prices since Covid. We urge others to assist festivals by visiting fivepercentforfestivals.com and asking their MP to cut back VAT on pageant tickets gross sales for 3 years to save lots of these important occasions.”

The latter a part of the remark by Rostron refers back to the AIF marketing campaign ‘5% For Festivals’ – which was designed to assist alleviate a number of the stresses positioned on pageant organisers. With the push, it informs festival-goers in regards to the issues confronted over the past 5 years, encouraging them to contact their MPs to foyer for a VAT discount on tickets.

It states that short-term assist from the UK Authorities – decreasing VAT from 20 per cent to 5 per cent on ticket gross sales for the subsequent three years – is all that’s wanted to present pageant promoters the house they should rebuild.

As talked about within the assertion, Towersy is much from the primary UK pageant to grow to be crippled by monetary pressure lately.

Prior to now 5 years alone, 172 festivals within the UK have disappeared. 96 occasions have been misplaced as a result of COVID, 36 have been misplaced all through 2023, and now, 40 have already been misplaced because the begin of this 12 months.

AIF has warned that it is a pattern that can proceed to develop with out authorities assist, and revealed that, with out intervention, the nation will see over 100 festivals disappear in 2024.

The latest studies from AIF additionally comes after NME appeared into why so many UK festivals have been cancelled or postponed lately, and spoke to business consultants to make clear the speedy decline.

It highlighted how Herefordshire’s Nozstock Hidden Valley introduced that 2024 could be their ultimate incarnation after 26 years as a result of “hovering prices” and monetary danger”, and Shepton Mallet skating and music pageant NASS announced that they wouldn’t be putting on an event this summer both because it was “simply not economically possible to proceed”.

Others talked about have been the cancelled Dumfries’ Doonhame Festival, Bluedot – which introduced a 12 months off for the land to “desperately” get well after being struck by heavy rain and cancellations final summer season – Nottingham’s Splendour, which was canned this 12 months as a result of planning delays from a financially-struggling metropolis council, and Barn On The Farm shared that it might be taking a fallow 12 months as a result of monetary constraints.

Discussing the problems at hand, co-manager for the latter, Oscar Matthews, informed NME: “From our perspective, the pageant in 2023 itself was sensible – it was a extremely profitable 12 months – however we have been hit majorly on a monetary stage by a mixture of elevated manufacturing prices and a really huge discount in ticket gross sales. That hit us from each angles and meant we suffered fairly substantial losses, regardless of the precise operating of the pageant going so effectively.”

It was additionally argued that with the continued lack of grassroots music venues all through the UK, smaller music festivals are wanted to supply the headliners of main occasions sooner or later.