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ZOO8 Organisers Declare Festival A "Qualified Success"
In a statement that's likely to raise the hackles of many of those who attended, the organisers of ZOO8 have declared the festival a "qualified success". The statement comes after many fans complained of incompetence and disorganisation.
"Our biggest problem was one of miscalculation over cash-flow” admitted Danny Blanche, Zoothousand Festival Co-Director. “This required us to make pragmatic decision to cancel a few acts. Thankfully, with some vital assistance from Port Lympne Wildlife Park, we managed to keep the show on the road, with the vast majority of the popular acts appearing.
“We also had to temporarily shut the Big Top tent on Saturday entirely because of Health & Safety due to problems with one of the poles supporting the structure. The obvious knock-on effect of this was that we had to move the acts into other performance spaces, which did cause some confusion, but there was no choice – safety always has to come first.”
Blanche continued: “We have had feedback that people were unhappy with the length of time they were waiting to get into the event, and the toilets on the campsite. People turned up much earlier than predicted on Friday causing delays, and the campsites became busier than expected which caused some infrastructure problems. These are all areas that we dealt with as best we could as they arose.
“Obviously, none of this was ideal or planned – and not the quality of experience that we had aimed to deliver – and for that we unreservedly apologise to all those affected by the situation. We want to stress that this was our first festival and that we have dealt with all problems directly and will continue to do so in preparation for next year."
So confident are the festival organisers of rectifying the problems that marred the event, they're already thinking of holding the eventnext year. Said Matt Dice, the festival's Co-Director: “Three other festivals went under this very weekend- we’re operating in seriously tough market conditions but we’ll rectify everything from this year and definitely be back for Z009”.
Were you there? Would do you think? A fair assessment of what happened or an experience different from yours? Leave your comments below.
http://www.xfm.co.uk/news/2008/zoo8-organisers-declare-festival-a-qualified-success
Hehe, good use of picture...