The last week has been pretty crazy for all of us for obvious reasons. As organisers, Splashy is everything to us – it is our passion and our livelihood. We feel hugely privileged to be able to bring you Splashy Fen each year, and the joy it brings to everyone’s faces means everything to us. With that privilege though comes a huge amount of responsibility, and in this case, that responsibility lies with the safety, health and well-being of our festival attendees, staff and service providers.
At times like these, we really need to appeal to everyone to display patience and understanding around the fact that this is nobody’s fault. It’s an unprecedented situation that we all find ourselves in, one that we will more than likely only ever see or experience once in our lifetime. And so it is a time where we cannot be selfish as a community or as organisers, as much as we would all like to be at Splashy Fen farm come 9 April.
As a festival we essentially have two options available to us, the first and most obvious one is cancelling Splashy Fen 2020. Cancelling seems to be the norm for many events to date, with little to no refunds being offered to fans due to a legal term called Force Majeure, essentially an act of god beyond anyone’s control. In such instances, a zero refund policy is being applied, which is our standard policy as well, however, this does not sit well with us as a festival due to the nature of what we are all being faced with.
While cancelling be an easier route for many, we need to be considerate of the far-reaching effects that a cancellation offers. Consider the artists and musicians who lose all income and ability to work during these times. Consider the toilet janitor, cleaning crew, food vendors, staff and service providers whose income has just disappeared. All these suppliers have essentially had their businesses temporarily closed, as have we. These are the same people who have brought you, the fan, so much joy and happiness over the last few years at Splashy Fen. This issue is greater and deeper than we can all imagine.
Having said that, we have prided ourselves as a festival on ethical behaviour, and a community that has the ability to support each other and pull together during testing times. We feel it is our duty as Splashy Fen to ensure that we continue in some way or form, to ensure that our service providers, artists, janitors, staff, cleaning crew and of course our fans have confidence in our ability to deal with adversity. Let’s us together make sure that in a time of uncertainty and negativity, we concentrate on creating positive energy and kindness in our lives.
Based on extensive discussions today, we are pleased to announce that Splashy Fen 2020 will not be cancelled. Instead, all our staff, sponsors, stakeholders and service providers have pulled together to show what a real community can do and we have managed to arrange a postponement of Splashy Fen 2020. The 2020 festival will now take place from Wednesday 23rd September until Sunday 27th September, with early camping available on Tuesday 22nd September. This new date will be during the school holidays, with Thursday (24th September) being a public holiday (Heritage Day). All tickets bought for Splashy Fen 2020 (Easter dates) will be valid for the new September dates.
As a festival, we are absorbing a large cost due to the postponement and all we can do is appeal to our fans to support our new date in September and to embrace these necessary changes. We promise to deliver the same amazing, value for money experience to you our fan.
Should fans be unable to attend the new date, Splashy will offer a 75% refund accordingly, in line with our refund policy.
More than ever, we as the public have a massive burden of responsibility to slow this virus down. More than ever, we will need to show kindness to each other. More than ever we will need to be unselfish and be a part of the solution and actively deal with this. As a festival, we assure you that we have considered every option available to us, and we will continue to pour the same amount of love, passion and energy into this new September date. We really appeal to you all to support this postponement and we look forward to seeing you all in September for a special staging of Splashy Fen 2020.
Stu & Fuzz