Published
Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 15:40
- This is the festival's second consecutive cancellation.
Boomtown Fair, one of the UK's biggest independent festivals, has cancelled its 2021 edition.
The lack of a specific Covid-19 insurance scheme was the main reason for postponing the 66,000-capacity event, which was due to take place in August. This is the festival's second consecutive cancellation.
The team behind the festival decided to make the decision before incurring more production costs ahead of an uncertain summer.
Communications & strategy director Anna Wade told Resident Advisor that Boomtown's 2019 production costs were around 17 million and that continuing to plan for the 2021 edition would have put the event's future in jeopardy.
"Just as we were starting to ramp up heading into the summer, it became really evident that it was impossible for us to continue without better knowledge over exactly what events will be possible come August," she said. "The only figure out there in the whole of the government roadmap is between stage two and three, when you can have a maximum capacity of 4000. When it moves from stage three to four, all the wording says is 'larger events'."
Boomtown Fair was among several festivals to receive funding from the Arts Council England this year as part of the UK government's £1.57bn culture recovery fund. It was awarded £990,000, the highest figure for any festival in the most recent round of grants, but less than 10 percent of its annual running costs.
Wade explained that Boomtown employs around 13,000 people each year and was keen to stress the impact this cancellation would have more broadly. "This doesn't just impact festivals and festivalgoers," she said. "The festival industry is a really large industry that incorporates highly skilled people that run their own independent companies or are freelancers themselves. It's a whole supply chain at risk."
Though the ship has sailed on Boomtown Fair this year, the communications chief remains hopeful for other events.
"This doesn't have to spell the end for this year's summer,” she said. "It's not too late for a lot of the festivals that have already relocated themselves to September, or even August as well, if they're smaller events. It's not too late for COVID insurance to be backed by the government."
Read Boomtown Fair's full statement and revisit Nyshka Chandran's story on the challenges facing festivals this summer.