The longest-running independent music festival in the United Kingdom, the Towersey Festival, will have to be suspended after 60 years, due to the increasing cost of hosting the event, organisers have said.
The 2024 edition is scheduled for August 23 to 26, but that will be the last time the event will be held.
The festival was originally founded in 1965 by Denis Manners. This year’s celebration will be held at Buckinghamshire’s Claydon Estate with a host of artistes billed to perform.
A statement announcing the permanent termination of the festival cited a lack of investment and partnership as some factors prompting the decision.
“We have worked incredibly hard over the last few years to try to bring Towersey back to financial stability. The pandemic wiped all our back up and changed the face of festivals across the industry.”
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“Coming back from this and the economic challenges we’ve all felt since then has been all but impossible. Without investment partnerships or a fundamental change to the character of the festival, we have concluded that we will have to bow out after this year,” it said.
The co-directors of the festival, however, hailed the “massive contributions” the festival had made over the past six decades to charities, local causes, tourism, and emerging artists.
“More importantly, we believe festivals like Towersey are crucial for creating better communities and societies and for finding hope and humanity in an otherwise challenging world,”
“We will continue to fight and endeavor to find a way of continuing to realize the hopes and dreams of our grandparents and founders, but it will not be through Towersey Festival anymore,” the statement added.
