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Boomtown Fair UK Cancels Over Lack Of Insurance, ‘More Will Follow’ Says AIF
http://photos.boomtownfair.co.uk/ – Boomtown Fair last took place in its full beauty in 2019.
The 2020 edition had been granted a capacity-increase of 10,000, bringing the total number of expected visitors to 76,000.
Boomtown Fair, one of the UK’s most famous indie festivals, has canceled its 2021 edition, citing the lack of government-backed insurance as a major factor, organizers announced today.
Planning an event as complex as Boomtown Fair, only to be canceled at the eleventh hour, would have incurred an “eight-figure loss,” as promoters pointed out in a statement.
All through the pandemic, live events professionals have been urging the UK government to come up with an insurance scheme that would allow promoters to plan ahead and organize without having to fear possible last-minute cancellations due to Covid restrictions.
Cries for such a government-backed insurance scheme have grown particularly loud since the government launched such a scheme for the film and tv production industries suffering from coronavirus-related losses last October.
The promoters of Boomtown Fair, with usually welcomes 60,000 to 70,000 visitors on its site in Winchester, England, already had to cancel last year’s edition.
“We are absolutely devastated to bring another round of heartbreaking news to you all almost exactly a year from an identical announcement,” they now write on the festival’s socials.
http://photos.boomtownfair.co.uk/ – Each Boomtown edition advances a storyline.
Actors and visitors become part of the fiction.
The statement continues, “We’ve been doing everything within our power to find a solution to the mind-boggling conundrum of putting on a safe and well-run event to the sheer scale, complexity and intricacy of Boomtown this summer.
“Unfortunately, time has run out for us to be able to proceed in a way that would live up to our high safety and production standards for the event we had planned.
“Critically, with less than four months to go and after almost half a year of collective campaigning to the government, COVID specific cancellation insurance for events simply does not exist at this point in time and therefore there’s no safety net to support us through the next stages.
“This means we would be gambling up to an eight-figure loss should the event not be able to go ahead due to COVID restrictions, which would put the future of the festival at serious risk.”
Boomtown Fair is a highly complex event, comprising more than 15 unique districts, filled with equally unique characters played by actors, all of which tell a story that progresses with each edition or, in the case of Boomtown, chapter.
This year was supposed to reset the chapter count to Chapter One again, the plan was to create a post-pandemic world, see video below.
Paul Reed, CEO of the UK’s Association of Independent Festivals, said, the “cancellation of Boomtown Fair is devastating but not surprising, and further festival cancellations will follow.
“AIF has been warning and providing evidence to the Government for over six months on the urgent need for intervention on insurance. It is an enormous risk for any independent festival to commit to upfront, non-refundable costs and very difficult to plan with confidence in the absence of insurance. The average cost of staging an independent festival is over £6 million [$8.4 million].
“A recent AIF member survey revealed that 92.5% of respondents do not plan on staging their events without some form of Government-backed insurance or indemnity scheme, with the measure being described as vital not optional. Considering the lengthy planning cycle of festivals, it is difficult to think anything other than we are being timed out for the summer.
“Governments across the rest of Europe have already acted to support festivals, sharing the risk with organisers so that they may reopen safely. If this Government doesn’t intervene in some way on insurance and back its own roadmap, I’m afraid that, despite the rhetoric, it won’t be a great British summer for events – it will be an extremely selective one despite the clear demand and huge amount of customer confidence that the roadmap has injected.”
The new dates for Boomtown, which has dropped the Fair for the next Chapter, are Aug. 10-14, 2022.