It’s Been a Rough Year for Music Festivals. But Let’s Not Get Too Excited.
There have been a couple of epic fails in the music festival industry this year, but Music Week would like everyone to take a breath and relax.
When the next edition of the PR crisis management handbook is written, the doomed Hope & Glory Festival will require a chapter all to itself.
From the contemptuously terse cancellation announcement (“no festival today”) to the social media storm that followed, the event’s organisers provided a crash course in exactly how NOT to handle a crisis.
Indeed, was it not for the Liverpool festival’s lamentable reaction, its demise would arguably not have received nearly as many column inches outside Merseyside or the music press. Instead, its antagonistic response saw it quickly escalate into a national news story.
Coming in the wake of the disastrous Fyre Festival and just a week after Derbyshire’s Y Not Festival was forced to cancel its own final day in very different circumstances, Hope & Glory’s collapse has brought the entire festival industry under the microscope.
The rest is definitely worth reading.
