Rebellion – Peter Goodbody
Rebellion Festival has been cancelled for 2020, but new dates announced for 2021 and this year’s tickets still valid, Getintothis’ Peter Goodbody has the news.
It was sadly inevitable and yet another festival has bitten the dust.
Blackpool’s Rebellion, the massive punk festival, set for early August in the Winter Gardens has fallen foul of the current climate and been cancelled. The organisers simply couldn’t see a sensible way of proceeding.
And even if it did go ahead, ticket sales were significantly down for this year. There’s a nervous air in the country at the moment and the enthusiasm for gathering indoors with 10,000 other people was waning fast.
Add to that the difficulty of actually getting bands to travel to Blackpool, both within the UK and, even more problematic, from abroad, then it has become clear there was only one possible result.
With some news outlets reporting views of industry heads that there are unlikely to be any gigs at all for the rest of 2020, then an event as big as Rebellion simply couldn’t survive.
This is particularly tough for Rebellion as it is completely independent, has no outside funding apart from ticket sales and is viable only by getting feet through the doors.
There is, however, a glimmer of good news as dates for 2021 have been announced already, being August 5 – 8 2021. That event will the 25th anniversary of this most superb festival.
We wish the organisers every good luck and hope we can indeed be back in Blackpool for the summer of 2021.
Bands announced for 2020 included Stiff Little Fingers, Tom Robinson, making his Rebellion debut, and Peter Hook & the Light.
Worth highlighting, though, that this year’s tickets will be valid for next year, but while refunds are available, there are other solutions, too, such as a chance for VIP entry if you can buy a ticket for next year’s event at this early stage.
Rebellion
There was a long post in the festival page on Facebook yesterday. Here is some of what they said:
“We are absolutely heartbroken to have to announce that it’s not possible for this year’s Rebellion to go ahead.
Please keep your WEEKEND TICKETS as they will get you in to Rebellion 2021. All day tickets will be refunded.
We have been monitoring the situation and looking at all options and whilst we were genuinely very optimistic 2 months ago and honestly thought that this would all be done and dusted half a year ahead, it’s clear that as each day passes things are taking a lot longer to go back to any sense of ‘normal’.
All the indications are that mass indoor gatherings will not take place for some time to come.
Obviously ticket sales have ground to a halt since the lockdown so the conclusion we’ve come to is that even if the Winter Gardens is allowed to open in August, we won’t be able to put on the same standard of festival that you’ve all come to know and love.
We are already losing key bands and there would be people that had bought tickets that either can’t travel (if overseas travel is still banned) or choose not to travel and it’s unfair on them too.
Further, we’ve listened to bands, fans and crew and the feedback has tended to move from an optimistic and positive response with people wanting it to happen to many of us now reluctantly accepting that it’s not the best thing to do for our communities health and well-being.
So for those of you that wanted us to cancel, we feel we’ve done the right thing but for those of you that wanted us to carry on you can rest assured that we looked at every available option on how long we could keep going before we had to make an awkward decision.
Putting on a festival of this size is a huge undertaking and our lives have been on hold with regards to pre-production and ticket sales so to be honest we’re running out of time now to make this happen anyway.
REBELLION 2021 is BOOKED!! – AUGUST 5th – 8th
Next year is our 25th Anniversary and we are planning an incredibly special event. We aim to come back bigger and better and put on the party that we are all going to be craving.
It is not possible to have the same line up so we will be starting again for 2021. However we’re mindful that many people keeping their tickets bought them off the back of this year’s line up so we will do our best to re-book as many bands as we can subject to availability, budget and our plans for 2021.
PLEASE HELP SUPPORT YOUR FESTIVAL
Cancelling this year’s event is obviously very damaging. We do not have ‘backers’, we do not have ‘sponsorship’ – Rebellion is a truly independent festival. The venue is not ours. Our only income is from ticket sales and out of that we must cover all our expenses which as you can imagine are massive for a festival this size.
We’ve had good years and we’ve had bad years, but we’ve always bounced back from the losses and if we break even then we’ve lived to see another year! But this is unprecedented – we’ve had all the expenses from August to May but if we have to refund everyone’s money it will frankly be devastating.”
There is a full statement on the festival website.
[paypal-donation]
