Womad risked losing £1m over event status, organisers say

The Womad festival was cancelled this year as it risked losing £1m and could have put the event's future in doubt, its organisers have said.

Womad was due to start in three weeks' time at Charlton Park but on Monday organisers decided to pull the event.

Festival director Chris Smith said one reason was due to the lack of guidance informed by the recent tests events that had taken place.

The Department of Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) has been asked to respond.

Mr Smith said: "This week we needed to invest over a million pounds and there's no guidance yet, produced from any of the test events that tells you what the expectations of government are.

"So we could have found ourselves in a situation where we committed to an event and suddenly the circumstances changed.

"We could be doing an event, where the government could still cancel it."

Mr Smith said the government had offered test event status to events within the four-week extension period from 21 June to 19 July. As their event fell outside this window they decided not to apply.

But soon after they saw that two other events had been selected, also being held on the same weekend as Womad, which had received test event status. This offers some protection, so Womad organisers applied but heard nothing back.

"We then heard that there were two events outside of that for window which the same weekend as ours which had actually been selected, so we immediately applied," said Mr Smith.

"We've been unable to get any response from emails that we've sent to the DCMS.

"I've contacted the person responsible for the scheme and they haven't had the courtesy to reply so we have to assume the answer is no," he added.

On Monday a DCMS spokesperson said it was working towards "live events being able to reopen fully from the 19th July as well as providing unprecedented support for the culture sector".

The department added that its "ongoing, science-led Events Research Programme is also testing how Covid certification and other measures can help ensure events can take place safely".

Follow BBC West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: [email protected]