OXJAM Chiswick Music Festival Called Off

Lack of key people and rising costs scupper fundraising event

Chiswick's largest annual music festival OXJAM Chiswick has been cancelled this year due to a lack of key personnel and escalating costs.

Oxjam Chiswick is part of a national music festival to raise money for Oxfam GB and Oxjam is their flagship event. This was meant to be the fifth year in succession that the event was run.

Organiser Julian Chattin said, 'We are based around a core team of volunteers of between 5-10 people who work from April through to an extended team of between 30 to 50 closer to the day. In previous years we have had a great team across all the areas, including Technical Production, Sound Engineers, Event Management, Marketing and Fundraising and due to the length of time people commit to each year we only occasionally get returning people within the core team, which means we recruit anew each year and unfortunately this year were were key people missing.'

The organisers felt that they couldn't host the festival knowing there was a chance it would be below what people have come to expect from them particularly as the public are paying to attend and the artists are giving their time for free.

Julian said, 'Our costs were escalating, despite great local support from The Hogarth Health Club and Haus once again, so we would have raised significantly less than in previous years. Oxfam, but in the process we would have damaged our reputation and possibly Oxfam's too, so we had to make the difficult decision to cancel this year's festival. We're trying to take a positive view on it and with a wry smile think that even the greatest of festivals, Glastonbury, has the occasional year off!'

The event had already had to be rescheduled a month early to avoid a clash with the Rugby World Cup and was due to take place on Saturday 19th September.

Since they have made the announcement, they have had a lot of support and messages of goodwill which they say has been really heartening and they are very appreciative. It has also given them added focus to come back next year for their fifth anniversary with something very special.

All Oxjam teams are run entirely by a team of dedicated Volunteers and Oxjam Chiswick came to life in 2011 and the local Chiswick and West London community has helped to raise over £55,000 in 4 years and has been one of London's most successful Oxjam festivals.

If you would like to help during the next festival get in contact with Julian for more details or visit the web site, www.oxjamchiswick.co.uk/getinvolved to find out more.

You can also following them on Facebook and twitter by going to: Facebook,  Oxjam Chiswick or Twitter, OxJamChiswick and sign up and keep up to date with new announcements and line-up information.

August 28, 2015