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Business News Gigs & Festivals Live Business
Electric Fields festival goes out of business
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 5 June 2019
Exactly one month before it was due to begin, Scottish music festival Electric Fields announced yesterday that the event has been cancelled and the company behind it is going out of business. The news comes six weeks after it changed venues due to “ongoing logistical and transport challenges”.
In a statement announcing the cancellation, organisers said: “This decision has not come lightly and we have put in our all to try to avoid this outcome, however we have been faced with challenges that we simply cannot overcome. As of today, Electric Fields ceases trading”.
The first edition of Electric Fields took place at Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfries & Galloway in 2014. The fifth edition last year saw headline sets from James, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Leftfield.
In April this year, organisers announced that the event would be moving to Glasgow and would no longer allow camping. In a statement at the time, they said: “Due to the rising costs of producing outdoor camping festivals and ongoing logistical and transport challenges we have made the difficult decision to move site to an inner-city location in Glasgow”.
Clearly issues still remained – not least that the move to Glasgow put them up against a number of larger events in the city. That includes DF Concerts’ TRNSMT, which is set to take place the weekend after Electric Fields’ planned dates. TRNSMT, of course, launched in 2017 as a non-camping festival to replace T In The Park, which closed after being forced to move sites and failing to make a new rural location work.
In their farewell statement yesterday, Electric Fields organisers said: “We cannot thank you enough for your support over the years and we are truly sorry that we have not been able to make this work. Never did we think the party we threw in a field in Thornhill for 100 of our friends would turn into a party for 7000 in the grounds of a castle. Especially not in five short years. But it did, and that is thanks to all of you who came along and made it what it was”.
Refunds are available at the point of purchase.
