Mirande Country Festival Cancelled ( Dept 32)

Posted elsewhere


Submited by Tricia on anotherforum


http://www.country-musique.com/
This festival has taken place every July for the last 20 years, but now they seem to have run out of funds, so it's cancelled for this year.
And on top of that the massive new Sun Stadium seems to be a "white elephant", and still not paid for.
It's a sad story, a sign of the times for a weak economy.
The financial loss to the town will be huge.




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Just my 2 Cents worth, as an Artisan expostant who has exposed at Mirande Country Festival every year from 1998 to 2010 I could tell this would happen. Which is why I stopped.


In my opinion it was obvious that the moment they announced that they were making the festival larger and moving it away from the town, this was announced to us exposants in 2009, that it was on a slippery slope. The festival was already divided in 2 with centre of town and inside the sports field ( I was in a pitch on the outside of the sports field) I was very aware that there was a certain percentage of the public that never even found the main part of the festival when it was a 5 minuite walk away from the town centre so how they were expected to find the new Sun Stadium well outside of town was a mystery to most of us.


Over the years the price of the emplacements has continued to rise in large amounts and the "perks" Daily newspapers, parking places for expostants, welcome drink for exposants, badges to enter the stadium etc were little by little withdrawn, we were left feeling that we were only wanted for our pitch fees and not much else.


It seems clear to me that the entrance fee to go inside the stadium was too expensive, even if it did include the concert tickets. The last 2 years after repeated delays they finaly held the festival in the new stadium on the outside of Mirande but chose to leave the old part of the festival in the town centre still functioning!!! Creating confusion as to what or where the festival really is. I spoke to my ex neighbour ( a food stall) about how it was going down at the new place and he was so depressed, He was forced to take a pitch inside the stade at nearly 3 times the old price, and no where near as much footfall as the old place.


I know that not only pitch fees go to make up the money for the festival but the lack of expostants would signal the end of a good experience for festival goers . The lack of this revenue as expostants stop booking pitches combined with less subventions mean only one thing. It's such a shame that a small friendly festival has killed it'self by trying to become so much bigger than it needs to be to serve the summer visitors. I believe they have tried to be too big.