THIS year’s ‘fallow year’ for Watchet Music Festival has been confirmed as the permanent end of the popular annual event which attracted sell-out crowds of 5,000 people.
Organisers have now accepted that last summer’s 25th anniversary festival saw the final curtain brought down.
They announced last autumn that the future of the music event was in doubt because of housing proposals for its Parsonage Farm site and therefore 2023 would be a year off while the situation was reviewed.
Now, Mark Bale, a director of the volunteer Watchet LIVE Community Interest Company (CIC) which ran the music event to raise funds for year-round community entertainment in the town, confirmed a lease for the site could not be renewed.
Mr Bale said land agents had offered to identify alternative sites on which to possibly relocate the music festival away from Watchet.
But, he said: “We know that taking Watchet Festival out of the town and starting afresh on new land is not feasible.
“We experienced some very challenging issues when moving from the harbourside all those years ago, and with the ever-increasing costs we feel that the ethos of the festival would be sadly lost.
“The event was set up to present three days of live music which was sensibly priced and affordable to all, while more importantly promoting our hometown of Watchet as a diverse, vibrant, and lively place to live and visit.”
Mr Bale said circumstances beyond the CIC’s control meant it could not renew its lease on the Parsonage Farm land used for the event.
The tenant farmer was retiring and vacating the farm, and housing development was being proposed on most of the fields used to stage the festival, while there was also an issue with the changing demographic of the town.
Mr Bale said: “Because of this, we feel after much soul-searching and debate that it has become apparent that this is the right time to allow Watchet Festival to come to a natural end.
“After 25 years of voluntarily organising events, some of the team feel that it is the right time for them to retire completely from event planning.
“Other members will continue for the foreseeable future to present other events in the town including carnival weekend and wheelbarrow race.”
Mr Bale said he knew the decision would come with mixed emotions for everybody, but ‘it is an announcement which many of you have been expecting’.
He said: “From its modest beginnings on the harbourside in 1997 to the size of the event that it has grown into, Watchet Festival has even exceeded our own wildest dreams and expectations of what we could accomplish.
“We really hope that our exciting journey has inspired others, to show what can be achieved with dedication, hard work, and determination, especially when we had a lot of non-believers and local apathy to contend with in the early years.
“To all our fantastic supporters, we are honoured to have had your loyalty, love, and dedication over the years, and to all the artists and performers we thank you for giving us many almost unachievable challenges which pushed us out of our comfort zone on more than one occasion as the festival evolved.
“We, like you, will have so many wonderful memories of the festival and would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who has supported and wholeheartedly believed in us on the long Watchet Festival journey.
“We are very proud and humbled to have been able to organise and present to you all this very precious event that will always be close to our hearts.
“Our thanks and gratitude must go out to every single performer, supplier, booking agent, other festival organisers, clubs, and charities who we now work closely with.
“And of course, our most marvellous hard working, dedicated, conscientious, absolutely brilliant team of volunteers who made Watchet Festival the event it has grown into, a festival with the biggest heart and a reputation on the event circuit that we thought we would never ever be able to achieve.”