Wales’ largest open-air theatre festival will not return this year

It is with sincere and deep regret that I have to share with you that we will be unable to proceed with the Cardiff Open Air Theatre Festival this summer.

I’m gutted, as I’m sure all of you are, but unfortunately we have no alternatives at this point. As we feared, costs have risen faster than anyone can keep up with, and there just isn’t a way we can make it work right now.

When I wrote to our members back in November, I outlined our financial challenges and the possible implications for the Festival after last summer’s devastating loss. As I explained further at the EGM in December, the Board and the Festival team met several times through August and September in a series of structured workshops exploring different ways forward for the Festival, where we eventually concluded sadly that we couldn’t find an affordable and sustainable model that would even come close to breaking even while providing the standard of experience that our members and audiences have come to expect.

At that meeting, though, I shared with you that we had been approached by a commercial partner, Live Under the Stars, to present a musical as the main part of a programme of events that they planned to stage at Sophia Gardens in June. This proposal would see them bearing the full financial risk and engaging us as a paid producing partner.

Together, we worked incredibly hard over the following weeks to get this in place. Even while they were staging the Cardiff Christmas Festival and combatting the disruption presented by Storm Darragh, Live Under the Stars didn’t lose sight of our partnership and kept working on site layouts, licensing, and infrastructural considerations for June. We had a production licence ready to sign, a draft contract ready for review, and a range of site plans drawn up.

Unfortunately, even with their greater resources and significant industry experience, Live Under the Stars regretfully reached the same conclusion that we reached in our workshops last summer. There is currently no version of the Festival at Sophia Gardens that makes financial sense. Different numbers of performances, different audience capacities, the presence or absence of a covered stand – we ran the numbers on all of it. It simply costs more than it earns.

I really do want to be clear on this: as a professional organisation, Live Under the Stars could be forgiven for walking away from a proposal that would turn too small a profit to be worth their while. Rather, though – and to their credit – they were reluctant to concede defeat until it became clear to all of us that there was not only no chance of a meaningful profit, but in fact an almost unavoidable, significant shortfall – even if we projected ticket sales even greater than we have achieved in several years. Their commitment to the Festival, and emotional investment in delivering it, was equal to our own. This is in no world a case of our being screwed over by a hard-nosed commercial enterprise. This is a case of all of us being screwed over by factors outside of our control.

As your Festival Chair this year and on behalf of the Board, I’m incredibly, incredibly sorry that we haven’t been able to find a way to deliver a Festival for you this summer. I took on the role expecting to be unable to move forward this summer, but committed to trying regardless. Then, when I thought we had a credible solution, I was – like you – elated, and hopeful that we had a secure pathway to recovery.

But while we are back to square one on the Festival, as a Company we are in a better place than when I wrote to you in November. This is thanks to a brilliantly successful fundraising event at Christmas and outstanding sales for Amadeus despite the challenging January slot. Huge congratulations and thanks are due to all involved.

We’re still in dodgy territory and need to get our ship in order more clearly, but we aren’t hovering near the zero line anymore, at least for the moment. So as a Board, we’ve been looking ahead and are now focusing all of our efforts in the immediate term to ensuring we instead are able to offer an exciting programme of other events for you to get involved with over the coming months, and we’ll be able to communicate a bit more about that very soon. It will mean some changes and new ways of doing things, but our top priority is making sure that there’s an Everyman for you and our audiences to enjoy well into the future.

Phew, if you’ve read this far, thank you. I’m sure you still have questions – feel free to get in touch with me at [email protected] and I’ll happily try to answer.

Thanks for your patience and understanding, and for being a part of Everyman.