The organisers of Stone Puppet Festival have cancelled this year’s event, which they had hoped to stage in the town centre in August.
Despite a hugely successful first festival last year, the organisers say their crowdfunding campaign to raise half of the funds needed hasn’t received enough support.
PRESS RELEASE: STONE PUPPET FESTIVAL
As you know, our bid for funding from Arts Council England was not successful.
After giving the situation a lot of thought and discussion, Richard and I decided to run a Crowd Funding Campaign based on the success of last year’s festival and the fact that so many people said how much they enjoyed it and stated they wanted us to do it all again “next year.”
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to promote the festival locally with your help and support in particular, it seems the campaign has stalled and after 10 days we see there is only £190 pledged of the £3,000 target. (£3,000 is 50% of the actual cost of the festival).
We would like to thank the few loyal people that pledged immediately last week and also the people that helped to promote and share news about our efforts on Facebook and Twitter etc and to the you for your help in sharing the news and information about our plans.
However, since it looks very clear we are not going to reach our target we’ve taken the difficult decision to cancel the proposed event. We really have no choice. It is highly unlikely I’ll plan any future puppet festival in Stone.
Our aims for the festival were genuine in that we wanted to bring a regular, exciting and unique family event to Stone and support the local High Street traders and the town as a whole by bringing in 1,000s of people to the town, even if, this time it was for only one day.
I have informed all the performers that had agreed to participate in the festival. Puppet people are very passionate about their Art Form and are always eager to share their craft and talents with others and to encourage new, younger generations and entertain people whenever they can. All were looking forward to it very much and all, without exception, especially the troup from Russia, every performer and participant reduced their normal fees to assist and support us in staging the festival.
David Leech
Festival Organiser
Richard Jones
Festival project Manager
