Olympics Kill Big Chill Festival
Organisers of Britain’s pioneering boutique festival the Big Chill announced that August’s outdoor event has been cancelled, over concerns about the impact London’s upcoming Olympics will have.
“Efforts are being made to look to bring a smaller event indoors this year,” a staffer wrote on the site’s Forum, “with the anticipation of Big Chill being back outdoors in 2013,” she added.
Big Chill overall boss Melvin Benn said he’d struggled to save this year’s festival which had been due to take place outside London at Eastnor Castle Deer Park between August 2nd and 5th, slap bang in the middle of the sports event.
“I looked long and hard late last year at moving the date so it didn't clash with the Olympics but the mix of the festival fans desire to keep the date and an inability to find an alternative date that works I plumped for maintaining the existing weekend,” he said in a statement.
“Sadly, the artist availability and confirmations we were achieving led me to conclude that I couldn't risk going ahead with the event as an outdoor event this year,” he added.
The Big Chill was founded as a multi-media gathering in a London church in 1994 by Katrina Larkin and Pete Lawrence, though soon evolved into a massively popular annual outdoor festival specializing in electronica and predominantly downtempo music. As the festival expanded continually and became increasingly mainstream, Pete Lawrence quit in 2008, citing ‘a variety of reasons, and with some considerable regret’.
“I have a restless spirit and I want to remain at the cutting edge, coming up with original concepts and fresh directions, and I have lots of new ideas,” he explained in an approved statement.
"After fourteen years it feels almost like a child growing up and leaving home - a real conflict of emotions, and not easy to let go of, considering how obsessively hands-on Katrina and I have been over the years,” he added.
Two years later, his partner Katrina Larkin also left though paid effusive tribute to Melvin Benn who had stepped in to take control via his company Festival Republic.
“It’s a massive demonstration of Melvin’s professionalism and passion for festivals, that after one year we both feel completely happy to finalise the transition,” she said (in a statement also posted on the Big Chill forum).
“The whole team at Festival Republic should receive both plaudits and awards for the sensitive and successful manner in which they have overseen what has been an organic evolution of an already extraordinary festival.”
“I feel completely happy that I’m leaving The Big Chill in the safest pair of hands in the country,” she added.
Speaking about he cancellation this week,Big Chill headliner Mixmaster Morris was pragmatic, advising regulars should travel to Portugal’s Boom Festival in August.
‘Come to this instead’: http://bit.ly/rA3lgJ he posted on Facebook.
Hledat
