Thirteen years of awesome...

 

It is with a heavy heart, we have decided after 13 years of building something awesome in Petersfield that our free to enter Community Festivals will sadly not be happening this year. 

 

Way back in 2011, just us two guys took it upon ourselves that the Summer Festivities, as they were called back then, must carry on with their August Bank Holiday fun after the previous organisers stepped down.  Armed with a tonne of energy, bucket loads of goodwill and years of experience in organising events we set about putting on our first Petersfield Summer Festival with only 6 weeks notice to "cobble something" together!

 

After a great success, we loved it so much we wanted to carry on and have added more and more community events into the Petersfield calendar ever since.

 

Due to be our tenth and most successful year back in 2020, the pandemic hit and knocked the world for six!  Not only did it put a hold on all of our community events but it wiped out our actual events business overnight as many of you will have experienced too.   After 2 years of lockdown the world finally came back to life and yet running events has never been quite the same and every year the struggles continue financially, physically and mentally.

 

Having financially backed the events ourselves for many years when bad weather hit and investing in kit and equipment to make the events as awesome as they could be, we just could not continue this way as we struggled to survive after lockdown.  

 

We took the decision to switch ownership of the events to Petersfield Community Events, the not-for-profit Community Interest company so we would be able to keep the events sustainable and yet with the way the world has been over the last few years, we were continually juggling demands and costs to try and keep things viable. Even with some funding from local Councils and sponsorship from local businesses, it was just getting harder and harder to make things work.

 

After having to cancel the Christmas Festival last minute due to the storm in December we realised, amongst other things, just how dependent we are on the unpredictable weather and how at a moments notice, our weeks and weeks of planning could be wiped out. This then combines with a huge strain put on the finances and our wellbeing yet again.

 

We will always love our community and will always be involved as much as we can keeping it awesome and we will keep The Petersfield Awards running and yet for our own health and sanity, we are going to take a break from organising the three main Petersfield festivals this year.  

 

It is not something we have ever worried about before as we love what we do but as part of our decision process we worked out, taking into account purely the hours "on the ground" loading and unloading vans, setting up and breaking down and then running the events that each of us has been working the equivalent of 6 working weeks a year for free; putting on the community events for everyone to enjoy.  In these challenging times and after so many years, we decided we need to spend some of those freed up hours to focus on ourselves and keep our own business running.

 

It has truly been an honour to put on all the events in our hometown for everyone to enjoy over the years. You have been very loyal guests time after time, supporting us through thick and thin and braving all weathers to come and enjoy what we have organised. Your continued support for all of our various initiatives from Easter Egg and Christmas Tree trails around the town, colouring competitions, fancy dress competitions, Oktoberfests, Beer Festivals, Bugfests as well as the huge support of The Petersfield Awards, which just keeps growing, really means a lot to us and has kept us going for all of these years.  

 

We want to say a massive heartfelt thank you from Ben and myself for being so awesome.

 

We also want to say an enormous thank you to the huge team of helpers we have had over the years without whom we would not have been able to bring our vision to life; from our own Hometown crew to generous volunteers giving their time to support the events.  We have just been chatting about it and the list is far too long to mention everyone as we have had so many amazing people work their socks off for us from dark and cold early mornings getting stallholders in position to picking up piles of rubbish at the end of the night before going home to bed.  We love you all and thank you for every part you have played in making our events as awesome as they have been.

 

As well as all of the people, we would also like to thank the many local generous sponsors over the years who appreciate the work and effort we put into building the community and stimulating the local economy.  You have all made a real help in us being able to put on our events.

 

It really is such a shame things have changed so much since the pandemic and have been constantly getting harder and with even more new guidelines for safety at events in the pipeline with the world the way it is, it will continue to increase and so we need a break for a while.

 

We thank you again for enjoying everything we have worked on for over a decade and thought we would share some photos below of our Hometown efforts over the years.

 

I expect we will see you around town as normal and we will be back out of our cages later in the year promoting The Petersfield Awards so keep an eye out for news...

 

Big love and be kind to each other.

 

Steve and Ben x