The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) and Citizen Ticket have partnered to create the Fallow Festival Fund for independent festivals. An industry-wide call has been made for further financial or service donations from festival suppliers, such as ticketing businesses, and other organisations across the music sector who are able to help.
The AIF says the fund is designed to minimise the number of festivals lost, with more than 200 having gone under since 2019.
The Fallow Festival Fund will offer festivals a support package in order to help them return. AIF will offer a free one-year membership to the organisation, so they can access the trade body’s services and resources and support from the network of 150 member festivals. AIF already offers this to any existing member who takes a fallow year and is now extending it to independent events outside its membership.
Financial donations to the Fallow Festival Fund will enable AIF to buy support from third parties to offer fallow festivals a number of other key services such as time on a legal helpline to review contracts and a financial health check.
AIF chief executive John Rostron said: “Three out of the four festivals that have cancelled this year are taking a fallow year in the hope of returning in 2025. There will be more festivals out there who are close to making this call.
“Every contribution – small or big – will make a difference and I hope that as the year goes on some of those events in a fallow year will be supported by this fund and have the tools, techniques, innovations and confidence to give them the lift they need to return in 2026.”
Help from ticketing
Citizen Ticket has pledged free use of its ticketing and bookings platform for festivals and events selling up to 2,000 tickets, while promoters running a larger event can sell their first 2,000 tickets free of charge. Citizen Ticket has also pledged free use of Eventree, the industry leader for accreditation and event management at UK festivals.
Citizen Ticket’s Phil Hayes said: “At TicketSellers, and now Citizen Ticket, we’ve been working in the independent festival space for 25 years. We’ve seen it all – foot and mouth disease, the pandemic, the cost of living crisis… Every time a crisis hits we’ve done our best to support small and independent festivals in any way we can.
“We’ve partnered with the AIF on Festival Congress five times and we wanted to take our partnership to the next level with this fund raiser. We are urging other suppliers who are able to offer something to please do so before more festivals are forced to cancel.”