Antiworld Festival: 070707 - An explanation

Be warned: If you don't like banging trance/techno do not press play on the clip above, it's of cult psytrancer Asterix tearing it up at Antiworld's 070707 festival on er, July 7, 2007.

We may be in the midst of a summer overflowing with music festivals (around 400 this summer in the UK alone), but all is not as fine and dandy as it seems. Pystrance crew, Antiworld have spent months if not years planning their debut festival - 070707.

And these guys have worked hard for years in organising huge 4500 people events at Brixton Academy and SeOne. I did fear for them trying to crack the festival market but was encouraged to see Ninja Tune hosting a tent and Mixmaster Mike of the Beastie Boys playing. However it all went tits up and the official explanation follows a few pars later.

All I can say it's becoming clear that without major sponsorship (alcohol, mobile phones) it is impossible to put on a festival with big names. A couple of years ago Tom Findlay of Groove Armada was telling me that most of the deals for which bands play at which festival (say Glastonbury, V, Reading, Leeds) are done on the golf course, and bands are required to sign exclusivity agreements, so they can't play at small festivals even if they want to.

The conclusion I came to was that festivals are as monopolised as your local high street - trying to do your own festival is something like opening a coffeshop and taking on starbucks. It's not impossible but it requires years of slowly building, step by step - perhaps like the Big Chill. But that too has had to accept sponsorship to survive and grow. Rob Da Bank has been quoted as saying you need £1m to put on a small festival, and had to be prepared to lose his home in order to get Bestival off the ground. The little guy suffers at the hands of multinationals obsessed with invading every last space on the planet to sell, brand and market to you. Rant over.

Statement from Antiworld regarding 070707 Open Air Festival

Antiworld and ES Collective would like to apologise to all festival goers, artists and crew who attended last weekend’s 070707 Festival at Rushmoor Arena and thank them for their support and understanding. We are very sorry about the early closure of the festival and the problems that occurred. We’re going to try and address some of your concerns below as we are well aware that there’s more than a few rumours being spread and we would prefer that people know the truth.

The festival opened around two hours late on Thursday afternoon after passing all its health and safety checks. We were scheduled to open at 3 pm but gates finally opened at 5 pm after a later fire inspection took longer than anticipated. We apologise to the people waiting at 3 pm, but we could only wait until the council carried out their vital checks to ensure the site was safe.

On Saturday at 2.45 pm the company responsible for waste disposal pumped raw sewage into a pipe near the top of the festival site. We would like to stress that this company had been paid a substantial deposit to provide the portaloos around the site and dispose of the waste at a facility nearby, and given their many years of experience at other major UK festivals, there was absolutely no reason to doubt their ability, nor that they would take shortcuts. Unfortunately however the pipe the sewage was pumped into exploded and the sewage surfaced in the backstage area, specifically the artist and crew kitchen and catering area, which was immediately shut by the council.

On Saturday evening we managed to deal with this situation by arranging meals for artists and crew through the various stalls on the site, and with so many of the public already on site waiting for the main headliners, the decision was taken that it was too dangerous to evacuate at this time with little or no public transport and not much chance of it being safe for people to drive.

We’d like to thank all that helped out here, especially the Veggedelic stall who saved the day and provided great wholesome food throughout and all the other crew who did more than their fair share. We can only apologise for the stress and extra work this caused. We appreciate that you all worked far more than had been agreed and will be in touch with you individually about your refunds. We would like crew to know that we had actually spent thousands of pounds on food and supplies to get us all through the festival, but due to regulations we could not actually cook or start fires on the site ourselves once the kitchen had been closed.

By Sunday it was evident that we couldn’t feed all the crew and the environmental health issues were growing. There were concerns that if it rained the sewage would get into the water table and contaminate the festival area, putting the health of festival goers, artists and crew at risk. The festival was closed around midday on Sunday after a council inspection showed that there was no way that the environmental safety issues could be resolved in the time we had left. We couldn’t feed the crew we had left and the medics had walked thanks to the health and safety issues, so the police recommended we close the site or else they would be forced to take further action. However with so many party-goers still in festival mode it was impossible to evacuate the entire area in a hurry, although we couldn’t start cleaning up or doing any work until the public were off the site.

If we hadn’t shut when we did Skazi and Talamasca would have played. They were waiting and were just as disappointed as the rest of us that they didn’t get to play in the end. Whether artists play or not, they still need their flights and hotels paid and it’s a long way for so many of these artists to come and sit in a hotel room.

Another point that should be addressed is that we placed too much expectation on our ticket sales when planning the festival. Originally our plan was to stage a 5,000 capacity camping festival, but we then found out it needed to be bigger if wanted to use the awesome Rushmoor Arena site. The licence was granted for 15,000 campers — another mistake, because there was no possible way for Antiworld to sell that many tickets in today’s current climate, despite the great efforts of the many promoters, artists and crew.

By April 2007 sales were still slow and the festival should have been cancelled and tickets refunded, but we still felt we could move forward with the help of sponsorship and more advance sales. By June 2007 sales were steady but not in the numbers we had hoped and sponsors were not available due to commitments made to other festivals. By this time, we had spent a lot of money in advertising and in fees toward artists to secure the dates. Many of the artists who didn’t turn up to perform had already received 50% of their fees in advance but decided not to turn up because the remaining 50% due had not cleared into their account on time. We know this was also a big disappointment for some of those who came to the festival hoping to see a favourite act; again we can only apologise.

After years of planning and preparation we are devastated by the outcome and can only apologise to the many festival goers, artists and crew who were as sorely disappointed as we are after losing out on the final seven or so hours of the festival. We’re also aware that there were some organisational problems with the festival itself and due to there being lower numbers than expected, some artists and stages were cancelled. The cancellation of the stages/artists was down to agreements between the specific artists and promotions involved: as explained above, deposits had been paid.

We’d like to thank the council for making sure the festival opened in the first place and for helping us provide a safe yet beautiful venue for people to party in. We all had the welfare of festival goers at heart and did our best to make sure things were as safe as possible at all times, especially given the extreme recent weather conditions. We’d also like to thank the police for their help closing the festival on Sunday afternoon. Closing a busy festival at its peak was always going to be a challenge and the police made sure festival goers and crew were informed and able to stay on site until they were ready to move — leading to many saying that Sunday was their best night of the festival, with so many groups of chilled out festival goers and crew making the most of their time left.

Most of all though, we’d like to thank the 5000 party-goers, artists and crew that made this such an incredible event. Yes there were a few things that went wrong, and the people involved will be contacted over the next couple of weeks to discuss their individual situations and try and make amends. Overall however the crowd, site, stages, music and production were fantastic.

We hope that festival-goers, artists and crew and anyone else who has suffered as a result of this event to please bear with us over this difficult time and ask you to please understand that we are not doing this for the money: we have lost everything — the income from many successful events, years worth of planning and hard work and any goodwill we may have built up over the years from party goers, artists and by no means least, our crew.

Please direct any feedback to e303power@hotmail.com or 0779 321 9497. Don’t call or leave a message but text and we’ll get back to you over the next couple of weeks. We need to hear your suggestions and concerns, especially if anyone has any video footage of the waste that ultimately led to the site being closed as we will need as much evidence as possible for our legal proceedings.