The festival landscape has been hit hard since the pandemic and Brexit. Rising supplying chain costs, and tough supplier terms, mean that even normally successful festivals are struggling to get their events over the line. There's lot of passionate fans, lots of people who love to make the event happen, but the challenges of running an event are harder than ever. 

96 festivals fell during the pandemic, and 36 fell in 2023. In 2024 a record 78 festivals cancelled, postponed or called time on their event. Many bought their event to an end, but last year quite a few managed to take a 'fallow' year' - giving themselves some time to figure out what they need to do differently to make their events work in this new climate. 

This trend is on the rise - already this year five festivals have cancelled, but four of them are taking a fallow year. That gives us hope that we can do something to help them.

It can be quite lonely running a festival - core teams are often just a few people - and it's challenging, or costly, to get the support you need to review finances, legalities, production, energy use, planning, creative, licensing, revenue generation and more. 

We want to make that experience less lonely and help bring great people to support the teams out there. We’ve big believers in working together and supporting each other. 

We want to give all those on fallow years their best chance of coming back, and we are not alone. So we have partnered with CITIZEN TICKET to create the FALLOW FESTIVAL FUND.

We're doing our bit - at AIF we are offering any independent festival free membership of AIF for one year. They can access all our training, resources and network of 150 independent festivals for free for 12 months to try and get them back on their feet.

Citizen Ticket, a leading independent ticketing company for festivals, has pledged free use of their industry leading ticketing and bookings platform for festivals and events selling up to 2,000 tickets. Promoters running a larger event can sell their first 2,000 tickets free of charge.

Citizen Ticket has also pledged free use of Eventree, the industry leader for accreditation and event management at UK festivals.

Other suppliers wanting to contribute can do so by contacting us through the email at the foot of this page.

We also need to raise some funds. Some of the support we know festivals need will come at a cost - so we want to help gather contributions so we can buy the bespoke services that we think will be serve those festivals chances of returning. All donations - small or big - will make a difference. 

We're hoping that with your support we can bring some fallow independent festivals back.

Independent Festivals on fallow years who wish to take up the offer the fund and support can do so by completing this short form HERE.