Future of popular Surrey festival in doubt

The future of a Surrey festival that has been running for nearly 20 years has been thrown into doubt.

The organisers of Weyfest said the 2024 event could be the last "for the foreseeable future".

It comes after the venue for the festival, the Rural Life Museum in Tilford, said it needed to raise funds by October to avoid closing.

Weyfest said without the financial buffer of 2025 ticket sales and no venue secured, it was not viable or responsible to go ahead with plans for a future festival.

The 2024 event, held from 15-18 August, included artists The Feeling, Lightning Seeds and Kosheen.

Previous festivals have welcomed Jools Holland, Gabrielle, Bob Geldof with The Boomtown Rats and Soul II Soul.

A statement said: "We would dearly love to find a way of saving Weyfest but we are a very small team and it is simply beyond our means with the current resources we have."

Organisers said Weyfest had grown from a pub event, but that needing to secure a new venue would "entail significant extra work" that its small team and funds would not be able to deal with.

They added: "You Weyfesters are an amazing bunch of people and to think that Weyfest 2024 could be the last for the foreseeable future just breaks our hearts."

If there was "a strong enough groundswell of opinion" organisers said they would investigate options including raising money through investment, crowdfunding, VIP tickets and similar schemes.

In 2019, Weyfest was named the UK's Best Small Festival at the Skiddle awards.

The Rural Life Museum said it needed to raise £150,000 to avoid closure.

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