Our 2020 festival was pretty much planned and ready to go when Coronavirus struck and by the end of March we realised that cancellation was inevitable. It had promised to be an excellent festival so most of our bookings were retained and simply postponed until 2021, obviously in the hope that we could go ahead with it all. We are being positive of course and hoping that this will be the case, but things are very uncertain now and we will have to be patient and cautious.
The situation seems pretty grim at the time of writing and we’re looking back upon our past events somewhat wistfully, perhaps realising that those times were even more special than we thought. If we could wave a magic wand at the moment and put on a Comedy Night we would have a guaranteed sell-out! Actually there’s nothing we’d rather do just now, but we will have to wait, and surely fun times will return in due course.
We hope to go ahead with some elements of our summer festival and we’ll be holding everything at outdoor venues where possible. The Art Exhibition is scheduled to take place at the Dixie Grammar School over the weekend 5th & 6th June. This slightly earlier date means that setting up will be during school half term, so a more socially distanced event would be possible. Fingers crossed that we will be allowed to meet by then. The Boules Competition is also on course – from the initial event in 2019 it was clear that there was keen interest in repeating the contest and we received requests to join as soon as last year’s competition was announced. So, if we are permitted to continue, we are looking forward to another well subscribed fun competition.
Our first Grand Raffle turned out to be a great success and we are organising another one this year. Two very popular comedy nights boosted our coffers too, mitigating the losses we incurred through cancellation (mostly deposits for events and for posters, banners & tickets already produced.) Financially we have enough in reserve to see us through to 2021 and of course all our committee and helpers are volunteers, generous with their time, energy and sometimes their storage space too. Support from the community has been marvellous. Some of you who had already purchased tickets generously refused a refund and from the many kind comments we received we know how much you value what we do – so we’d like to thank you all, as without you there would be no festival.
The committee meets regularly via Zoom and we are assessing the situation week by week. We’re in discussion about events that might involve the public in a safe and socially distanced way, such as competitions, trails, virtual exhibitions & so on. We would so much like to bring our community together to have some fun! But that of course is not even legal at present so we will have to be as inventive as possible. As ever, we would appreciate your input so please do send us your ideas, we’re always pleased to hear from you at info@bosworthfestival.co.uk
Our aim is to ‘Celebrate the Arts’ in the local community and our thanks and best wishes go to all of the participants, the committee, volunteers, sponsors and audiences for their dedication and support. We look forward to seeing you at our next festival event whenever it may be!
Information about all our events can be found here at www.bosworthfestival.co.uk where you can also sign up to our occasional newsletters.
