Boards
BLOC. festival makes a statement
Copy-paste of the press release as follows:
Bloc 2012
Before anything else, we need to explain why it’s taken us so long to be in touch with you all
following Bloc 2012.
On Tuesday 10 July 2012, after the cancellation of the festival, we voluntarily placed the
company we have run since 2006, Baselogic Productions Ltd, into administration.
This meant a team of insolvency professionals took charge of the company in order to
investigate what happened, and deal with the fallout in the fairest way possible. In our case,
the administrator was Jamie Playford of Parker Andrews.
The advice we received was to hang back from all public conversations about the festival as
they worked in the background to make their enquiries and ascertain the status of refunds.
Anything we said publicly could have compromised their efforts and made it harder for this to
happen. As much as we wanted to reach out to everyone, we were told time and again that
ultimately it would only harm this process, so we’ve kept quiet.
It’s been painful to watch everything develop and not be able to comment, but ultimately it
was the best thing as now we and Parker Andrews are in a position to explain what happened
as far as we understand it, and publish information on refunds. We’re sorry for our silence but
it was unavoidable given the circumstances.
First of all, some background information on how we got to this point.
Our company, Baselogic Productions Ltd was a client of London Pleasure Gardens Ltd, hiring
the venue to operate Bloc. The license was held by London Pleasure Gardens Ltd for events
of this kind for between 12,000 and 25,000 people.
At 23:45 on Friday 6th July, we took the decision to cancel the festival midway through its first
night, owing to concerns for crowd safety.
We are very grateful to the Metropolitan Police for their support in assisting with the
evacuation but we would also like to make it clear that, contrary to some reports, it was our
decision to cancel the event.
It’s a testament to the character of the people at Bloc that the evacuation was so peaceful
and calm. We would like to thank you all for this.
There has been a lot of online chatter regarding ticketing and admissions at the festival.
As already confirmed in a statement by Crowdsurge, who retailed tickets for the event, our
total sales for Friday 6th July were 15,786. We took tickets off sale two days in advance and it
is accepted by all concerned that we did not oversell the event.
However, we did experience problems with the management of the admission control
systems. The area that was set aside for queuing before tickets were checked became
overcrowded at around 21:00. This began to put potentially dangerous pressure on the
searching lanes leading into the festival.
At 21:27, following a breach of these lanes, ticket scanning was suspended to ease the
pressure. Comprehensive ticket scanning was not properly resumed beyond this point.
Knowledge of the suspension of scanning combined with ticket touting enabled people to gain
entry to the event without having purchased a ticket from our website. We’ll never know
exactly how many people this was.
The state of the venue also attracted a lot of attention online and in the press. It is no secret that there were serious delays associated with the building of the London
Pleasure Gardens site, leading to non-completion of groundwork, venues and general
infrastructure.
There is no doubt that these delays severely compromised our efforts to deliver a successful
production.
In the run up to Bloc, much of the site remained unfinished, inaccessible or just closed
altogether. For instance, the bridge connecting the main gate to the northwest of the site was
never built and the grass amphitheatre for our planned Silo D cinema was fenced-off.
Despite our frequent requests for an up-to-date build schedule, it was confirmed just two
weeks before the festival that ‘The Hub’, a 2,800 capacity high-spec venue that we had
contracted to host one of our main stages, was not going to be ready for us to use.
Furthermore, the large area in the south east of the site where it was to be built remained
shut so that construction works could be completed in time for the Olympic period.
While failures in admission control contributed to an increase in overall numbers of people at
the event, missing infrastructure and venues meant that much of the festival ended up
focused in the northeast corner of the otherwise massive 60,000 square metre site. Most
people chose to congregate there causing unanticipated overcrowding which ultimately led to
our safety concerns.
When the extent of the missing infrastructure was revealed, we considered our options.
London Pleasure Gardens was clearly a long way from the ‘riverside arts and entertainment
destination’ that we had hired but our relatively small company lacked the resources to cover
the costs associated with a postponement or cancellation of the festival or a legal action
against the venue.
Since Bloc, London Pleasure Gardens Ltd has also gone into administration and the site is
now closed. The venue had originally seemed like the perfect new home for Bloc so we’re
really sorry that everyone was let down. All of you who bought tickets, travelled from afar and
have supported us through many years of festivals, and parties and clubs before that,
deserved better.
Following five successful editions of the Bloc festival, this year we could not deliver what we
had planned - we cannot stress enough how sorry we are for this. We’ve learned from these
experiences and have humbly taken on board the criticisms leveled at us.
At the links below there is more information from Parker Andrews and various documents
available to download to help you claim your refund. Please print off the form, fill in the
relevant information and post it to the bank that issued the card you used to buy your ticket.
Many people have already received a refund via this method. If you have yet to claim yours,
this is the best way to do it.
We hope that this goes some way to explaining what happened, and the information on
refunds below goes some way to making good on the situation.
Thanks to those of you who have shown love and support, particularly over the last two
months, and we hope to be in touch with you again soon.
Bloc x
www.blocweekend.com
www.parkerandrews.co.uk/news/bloc-ticketholders