| Topic: | Re:Sad news about Brentford Festival cancellation | |
| Posted by: | dave viney (music manager) | |
| Date/Time: | 18/02/12 13:54:00 |
PRESS RELEASE RE THE CANCELLATION OF THE BRENTFORD FESTIVAL After 7 successive years, the Brentford Festival scheduled for Sunday 2nd September in Boston Manor Park, will not be held there this year. As a result of the contract that the London Borough of Hounslow awarded to John Laing Integrated Services to manage Boston Manor Park and its use for public events, the Festival is being asked to make financial & legal commitments which, as a non-profit community group manned by unpaid volunteers, is just not able to make. Despite approaches to both LBH & Laing to resolve these issues, they have not responded in time for us commit our limited resources to organising & managing this year’s festival in Boston Manor Park. Additionally, we understand that the park’s staff who have volunteered their essential support of the Festival in previous years have recently lost their contract with Laing and so will not be available to us in future. It is possible that the Festival will be transferred to another site in the Brentford/Ealing area but, if so, it is unlikely to be on the same scale as previously and thus not as comprehensive a community event. We hope that the Brentford Festival can return to Boston Manor Park next year and to this end, we invite you to support us in resolving these issues by making your views known to the Council – you can do this by emailing Hamish Pringle, Assistant Director Leisure and Cultural Services (Hamish.pringle@hounslow.gov.uk) and/or your local councillor (see http://democraticservices.hounslow.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx) Brentford Festival Committee www.brentfordfestival.org.uk February 2012 ‘Dave Viney, the festival’s music manager commented “it is appalling that the Council has apparently abdicated any responsibility for free community events in public parks – the Brentford festival was a unique opportunity for local musicians to showcase their talents and entertain local residents in a festival environment – together with their oppressive regulation of live music in pubs & clubs, the Council seem hell-bent on exterminating live music in the borough’ Linda Massey Event Manager says “It is with great sadness that we have had to reach the decision to cancel Brentford Festival 2012. We felt strongly about the decision for JLIS to charge a fee in 2011 and I mentioned this in my monthly article which appeared in the paper in May. As unpaid volunteers there has never been an issue of my colleagues and I supporting the local community by providing a high quality event but not when someone else is profiting from it. LB Hounslow came to the rescue last year and paid this bill but this always felt immoral. We gave all parties enough time to sort the issue out amongst themselves and the timescale was not unreasonable”. As a result we leave a lot of people disappointed; if the “powers that be” can rally around and meet our requests made in December then maybe we can consider resurrecting the event in 2013. |