Overview 22 Nov.
Regarding intimations.
Let us simply say this - if someone can put themselves in the shoes of the following person.
A mother - single parent, music teacher to her own 3 children (oldest now 19), for 20 years a music playing mother in a region where everyone knows everyone else - artistic and musical.
2 1/2 years working up to the big weekend this May, her children aware of the event which had been planned out and administered from their kitchen all this time ! and even at times being part of planning conversation - event, the kind of music to put on, and of course SERIOUSLY looking forward to the weekend their mother would be hosting where they also would get to encounter the wonderful musicians gathered - even Green Room stuff, maybe a few 'famous' faces there for their instagrams or the like. Why on earth would that woman NOT ACT - to the very best of her ability, to make sure that the gates were open on time for the up to 1200 guests?!
And also obviously in all dealings up to the day the public enters, be as reasonable as possible and completely honest. All festivals have money and other shenanigans in the lead up. It goes with the territory. Suggestions that some almost deliberate act caused ALL our losses are absurd.
In fact the 'shame' of the event cancelled just like that, even within close family has been major cause of immediate distress.
Perhaps such that communications were poor after this earthquake. And yes in such shock that a personal apology didnt happen.
But then it is hard to apologise when one knows one is not to blame. We are due an apology from someone else....That said of course apology, regret - more than that, an appreciation here in writing and in recent emails all losses by others are almost taken personally even by Dorothy.
Additional info 22 Nov 2022
NB this website is NOT optimised for mobile - you
will have to use computer to view.
Perhaps it is not emphasised enough that the bank account (s) on the Dorothy means page on this site are her personal bank account. A personal account was used to save money (charges) also - see below, in Wales it wasn't even possible to go to a bank to make new banking arrangements earlier this year. So that system was maintained.. may not be perfect but plenty of sole traders do just this.
There are of course some personal spends mixed in
with the monies in and out which were almost all festival presales and
expenses.
Furthermore, in 'shock' at the events of
May, some arrangements were made to start refunding people, and it was all a
bit higgledy piggledy due the stress. Those payments (out) since early June we
havent tallied yet. The important figure is at the bottom of that page, in the
pending bankruptcy declaration, - sadly ALL the money is gone. Zero left. For
now.
At the moment we don't have any money left to pay for help (as we were) doing things like full forensic transaction accounts or computer spreadsheets.
It also occurred that those looking at this may
largely not be aware of the following: hospitality, nightlife and associated
businesses were opening up autumn 2021 in ENGLAND. And Downing St was
certainly messaging in ENGLAND last winter things would have to return to
normal.
However Hay-on-Wye is half a mile into Wales. The Welsh government took a completely different approach - all hospitality was in effect entirely closed down all winter 2021/2 and only very reticently was that law relaxed from about March this year. Their public messaging was one of "we will be different and be far more cautious" Many of us had no idea what they would do (and many disagreed with their approach but THEY had full legal powers - devolved).
Staff stood down -no one knew what
would be allowed! ...or when it was financially safe to plan to open any hospitality destination. The
entertainment sector in Wales was still in nervous breakdown this spring. .
Only in early April was it clear that at last Wales had fallen in line with England
so arrangements to reschedule for this May were of course hurried. Though
all rules and normal practices were adhered to. At our end.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Nov 15 2022
This is a website that is not 'trading', and will never be used for any future business
or event.
Our main website https://www.wildworldfest.co.uk/ is here but is not amended since May this year as we cannot afford settlement with the professional host.
Please do NOT contact us through that site as we have no control now and will get NO notifications if you do.
This website comprises three sections. This main page, a side page which is
a collection of the bank statements used for monies in this matter and also all
my personal bank statements; a third page under development will also give background to some of the financial
dealings only in 2019. Simply as further background.
The purpose of this website is to firstly explain a sequence of events that caused
us all to lose out financially up to the last weekend of May 2022, and also
show how Dorothy, the founder and manager of Wild World Festival, has not
gained personally in any way from over three years of hard, near full time, work
put into this event. Furthermore has a simple lifestyle whereby no one
need feel she is anything other than a hard working many year
single mother subsisting at average income for someone in that
position. And in fact has personally paid a huge penalty in that three
years hard work, that is still ongoing dealing with the aftermath, has in fact
not resulted in any wages at all for 4000 or more hours work. There are no other lucrative events in
the future, and will be none, especially
now a major recession is underway.
We aim to be 100% transparent. Every penny inbound to this event, from even
2019, to now, can be accounted for.
We have logged some evidence at the bottom of this webpage as to our professionalism - site plans, H+S docs. We will email originals of some of these documents and will also be emailing all concerned copies of email trails (with the venue) that prove our good faith and professionalism.
In fact we have forked out on this modest simple new £10 url to make it
much easier for people to see in one place the whole ‘case’; the whole story.
We may even be sharing this with lawyers if we think we may be able to take
this forward into a claim whereby the losses all around may one day be
recompensed, but that is presently, unfortunately, not a possibility as there
are no funds left at all for more in depth legal advice regarding liabilities
of a problematic venue – the one root of all of our losses. If this changes we
will advise people.
We will give some cv details at the end of this, but perhaps most germane is
the context of core team setting the festival up, and where the event was
planned: Hay-on-Wye a small town of a couple of thousand souls, where most
people know one another. Dorothy living there
seven years - within walking distance of the venue, and in the region within 20
minute drive, two decades. In 2008 as
this venue opened its doors Dorothy was, we recall, the very first person to
put on musical cabaret at this venue with her associates from the region
(mainly performing artistes from Hereford). She hosted well attended, professionally run,
evenings then at this venue (under their umbrella). And continued over the
years a close relationship with management.
Background, many years involved in songwriting and also music tuition. The
last 20 years also running yoga classes including a fair bit at
carehomes. Between myself and a whole network of many year friends, we
have a large network of those in music and performance and we knew our strongest
attribute was we would be able to market this event throughout our two decades established
networks in music, arts, and festivals.
The chronology.
Festival concept developed 2019 and financial partners sought and a whole
host of music and other entertainment talent secured in principle. A deposit of
£1000 was paid to book the venue late 2019- the building and grounds of the
Globe Hay-on-Wye. For near a decade events of 1000+ audience in this whole space was
a well established norm.
By mutual consent when covid forced closures etc., this was postponed.
Contracts remained in force - we did not seek return of deposit always
intending to reschedule when legally allowed, and when appropriate in accordance
with making the most for our performers traders and charities we support, such
as Tree sisters. https://treesisters.org/
Supporting that organisation and other environmental organisations was our very
core ethos in every way and the main reason we were hosting this event. Eventually
a new date of 27-30 May which had been agreed Oct 2021 with the venue owners was finalised.
Here is an overview of some of the large expenses involved in putting on the event
We have VERY accurate accounts being prepared that show a clear financial trail – monies in, and what it all
went towards..
This is briefest simplified ‘account’ of the event finances for now.
We expect to email out a full spreadsheet of all monies in / out by 20 November
2020
The expenses and liabilities to date add up to something like £50,000
Summary of individual payments out that are simpler prepayments (balances to
be paid in some instances after the event):
Prepayments such as:
£10,000+ paid to staff involved with organising and consulting upon all
aspects of this large event. All payments are logged in accounts.
£10,000 deposits paid to artists.
£1000 paid out to book paramedics
£1.500 paid out for Health and safety consultants and professionals
£1000 deposit to venue
£500 deposit on separate camping area
£800 Insurances
£165 traffic plan company
And then thousands more on obvious incidental items and services which all
add up such as
Purchase of wristbands (£400 ish), signage plus pain £700 ish
Our remaining liabilities are in excess of £30,000.
Naturally and as can be seen from all appended bank statements and other
financial records there is nothing left.
Some staged payment arrangements were entered into and most will be a struggle to keep to.
A month ago it was realised that personal bankruptcy may be inevitable. In
that even i have no assets at all. The only family car is a £500 very old and
extremely thirsty Volvo
All our energy went into resuscitating the event from early spring 2022 as
the pandemic was waning and legal controls on events seemed to be loosening. It
was obvious that domestic tourism would be well subscribed this year and
Hay-on-Wye is a place where for many years well healed culture-loving visitors have
on their map and we knew these events in the background would have made this an
EXTREMELY good event in respects of takings all around.
Hay-on-Wye is well known within hospitality and other circles and tourism
research overall as being a place that attracts 100s of thousands of high
sending visitors annually.
The main Hay Literary Festival, established 30 years, ( 26 May - 05 June 2022 – always scheduled the
last week of May, into first week, June,
for 10 days ) brings in several hundred thousand visitors, hence our wish to
capitalise on our offer to our ticket buyers this particular
weekend. The ‘first’ weekend at Hay is traditionally – for 20 years+,
the weekend the highest number of visitors attend and also is the weekend that
dozens of world famous celebrities are to be found milling the streets. These
have been in past years from Bill
Clinton to Maya Angelou, Jk Rowling to Ken Dodd. People know for 100 miles it
is by far the best visitor footfall trading
opportunity of the year, anywhere, by far. The last decade many of these high
profile wealthy people found this particular venue as a wonderful little oasis
they would have been very familiar with. Booking meals – attending the events
there as an addendum to the main festival, even booking the venue out for private
functions and press junkets for example.
In summary: Wildworld festival had booked for by far the largest grossing weekend in Hay-on-Wye by far the largest hospitality venue within Hay-on-Wye. There is surprisingly little else that happens at night within the area over festival time so high attendance assured.
And this year several among our (founder ) numbers are many year activists
in international environmental matters and we wished to capitalise (for these
good causes) upon the newfound surge in wider society to now take environmental
matters far more seriously ( the founders own teen children very much
prioritise this in their own world view).
Hence our even more assiduous thrust marketing the event as connected with
these essential good works and our pride at being officially partnered with Tree sisters among
others.
The most germane time frame is as follows.
2 ½ years we were formally booked to be using the venue for our event. The
main building – capacity of 250, and the grounds with a capacity of additional
1000. Tents, stages and all sorts to be
set up in the grounds. As has occurred at that venue regularly the last 7 or
more years (other brands of event). Large weddings and all sorts of other
private hire of the venue and grounds are quite the norm.
We had booked the venue autumn 2019. Formal booking, £1000 deposit paid. The
booking and concomitant contract was in
review and discussion from early 2020 and in writing once again, adapted for
new dates, we had a new arrangement mid April 2022. All along telephone contact
with management was that our booking was still there for us as we all
rescheduled after 2020.
Friday 13th May 2022, after some earlier issues - perhaps technical or back
office at the venue in the proceeding few months, we saw that our event was
showing on the venue events listings on their website, https://www.theglobeathay.org/
I listed all four days of our festival when we were soul user of all the premises.
Obviously our large event ongoing would preclude other routine in house
entertainment events.
Saturday morning 14th of May we noticed that, to our horror, our event was
no longer showing in their schedule of upcoming events. This was the first time
we knew of any potential actual real threat to the event. The first point we
were able to speak to the manager of the venue (who i had known personally a
decade!) Monday 16th May 2022, she advised me quite out of the blue,
to quote her
" H [the owner] has pulled your booking". No explanation, no
acknowledgement of any culpability in
what was obviously a major kerfuffle to come.
The dealings with venue management up until that point had been at times
dysfunctional, and some may even say negligent, but I suppose we were
making allowances in that many medium sized businesses (such as theirs) were
likely experiencing rough patches as they jumped back into action after a long
covid shut down. Staff taking time to get back up to full speed. We believe
this venue is part of a London owned suite of hospitality venues. Though as we stressed
earlier the owner for many years has a residence a few miles from Hay and is
around many weekends in any typical year. He is a well known sight about town.
We have an email trail with venue management that shows we acted only
efficiently and in very good faith, always. We have attached copies of this email trail in emails out - please advise if you have not received
this. There are of course many such emails which we
cannot supply yet in full – we may have to prepare to share the fullest
schedule of all communications in time, but suffice to say nothing appeared or
was said to us suggesting there was any major issue with the booking of the
venue until seven days before the set up date. Of course by that time we are
aware stallholders had purchased in perishable items as supplies over the festival weekend.
All that matters if we end up in court on this is that we had a contract
with appropriate guest numbers recognised, in place – updated for the covid
postponement, and once again we were categorically on for our event in
May. Normal health and safety and licensing negotiations were of course
back and forth with any event like this, but there were no issues over
and above any normal hiccups with such large bespoke events, especially after a
national pandemic.
Ticket sales and deposits required of traders booking with us of course
continued as we had no reason to even suspect the event would not open its
doors when planned. And to a very good crowd of guests hungry for culture and fellowship
shared joy and celebration, spending aplenty AND adding to our good causes, after for many our long two years of pandemic
isolation.
Our analysis of events
We simply have no idea what was going through the mind of the venue owner,
and cannot know. No communication since has presented any case that justifies
breaking the contract. We have our opinions which we cannot express here
for ‘legal’ reasons.
In fact even still, now, we have not received our £1000 deposit back. Vague
threats – bullying in our opinion, have come in whereby it is being made
conditional that any negative comment about the venue be removed from Facebook,
and also we must sign a ‘waiver’ -
absolving the venue from any blame or liability whatsoever in this course of
events. On the former this is against our principles and one would assume also
the owners in that his ‘How the Light Gets in’ festival (the second weekend of
the main Festival) will have hosted many talks over the years on the matter of
Free Speech as being central to democracy and fundamental human rights.
We wish to emphasise that at every stage of developing this event we were more than professional and complied with all legal requirements such as obviously considerable public liability insurance, all other concomitant insurances, full health and safety document, sound levels documentation, traffic plan
We are exasperated still (we have had no explanation).
Though we are all extremely peaceable people
we know that is in one of the neighbouring towns – Kington or Hereford, had
this occurred there would have been such anger it would have been likely a gang
of heavies take it upon themselves to pop
round and seek some financial justice.
This venue is the prime all-year-round music and
entertainment venue for Hay and a large catchment. It is clearly their
responsibility to maintain cordial relations with local people, businesses, and
even the international music artists we had signed on, such as some of you receiving this.
This event was a gathering of the ‘gentler’ people in our
world – not sharp elbowed big money characters and none of us should have received this callous
treatment in what was obviously our very best chance few months for financial
recovery post 2020/21
NEXT STAGE.
Our own reputational damage is near fatal. And this was to
be the arena i operate in for the rest of my life: Events, workshops, retreats.
Alongside my many year work as yoga
instructor but I have for years been very much focused on hosting all sorts of
smaller events. I suspended all my yoga
instructing work to focus on the festival. It will take months if not more to
rebuild my client base.
This is likely to be a permanent loss of reputation to me
though if somehow I can conclude this in such a way that there is ubiquitous appreciation
that we were in no way negligent or intended deception it would allow me to maybe
even one day attempt to host future events for the benefit of all concerned –
especially those who lost out the most. In truth it will take me time – a year
in all likelihood at least, to recover from the great stress of these last 6
months.
As this write up started I wish transparency. We will do our very best to keep up with follow up emails around my busy family life and critically restarting my so so behind paid work. Suffice to say that as of a few weeks ago once again I have entirely lost every moment of my life to trying to set up now some next stage when i should be seeking new work to keep my two school aged kids’ household ticking over. I have a volunteer legal person helping but none of us have any means even to pay his extremely humble expenses – a coffee at a cafe as he gets the bus over here.
In conclusion things remain in flux meaning with such a
large liability I am not sure how we carry on settling anything. We are open to
whatever the near future holds and ONLY want to carry forward ethically and
fairly.
We intend to have a
dedicated new mobile phone number for dealing with this one matter – trader and
other official contact with us. We know it is much more human to speak with one
of us (the other party at present being volunteer completely unpaid legal
expert ) person to person. At the moment the old landline is unpaid and i cannot use it, and i am stuck
getting a new sim card to set up a new number anyone can use for us, but hopefully
within days this will be remedied and a
new contact number in place.
+++++
Personal means and
personal loss. Personal statement Dorothy.
My means: years hard working jobbing on a range of smaller
events, gatherings, performances alongside years working as a yoga instructor.
.. From mid 2019 organising this event, and then as covid came along rescheduling
rebooking, reorganising this event became my Primary work. 90% of my waking
working days for 3 years was on this one
project. And it will also be the case i
continue to have to work on this for months to come. I have just spent at least
half my waking hours for the two weeks running up to the publication of this
page on yet again getting more legal advice, accounting advice etc.. I have had a full on exhausting stressful consultation with
a legal advisor helping me at the moment that has been almost daily for a
forthnight once again. . It is so exhausting i am unable to recommence my old existence
as simple yoga teacher, even. And there will be likely months more of this i
have to deal with.
In other words pretty much four years of my workinglife will have been almost entirely absorbed with
staging the event, then this awfully traumatic aftermath, for which i will not
have received any wages at all. Likely 4000+ hours of hard diligent work, for
nothing. The only payment to myself was
a fridge and hoover i paid out of the advance takings earlier this year when
mine gave up the ghost. My main achievement has been only, thus far, a loss of
previously very good reputation. This will affect my livelihood for years.
None of the leading players expected to get rich from this
event – the weekend we were operating, but we did expect to make something approaching
the perhaps just half the national legal minimum wage amortised over a few
years of up front efforts, if we were lucky.
All of our losses are immense in the context of what we have
lost from interruption of trade in 2020 and 21 and the inevitable bonanza this
event would have been.
Evidence
