Hundreds left unpaid after festival firm goes bust

Suppliers, contractors, ticket holders and musicians are among those who say they have been left out of pocket because a festival organiser went bust.

Gracenote Promotion Ltd (GPL) announced it had gone into administration on 6 July, a week after it held Morvala Festival on the Rame Peninsula in Cornwall - the company is also responsible for Kernowfornia in Looe in September, which has now been cancelled.

One stage manager said he had not been paid £10,000 for work done at Morvala and said "hundreds and hundreds" of others had also been affected.

GPL has been contacted for a response - in a previous statement it said was "so deeply sorry".

Site manager Tom Ogilvie, from Cawsand in Cornwall, said: "As a freelance crew, you are 100% reliant on the festival holding up their end of the bargain to pay you when all is said and done, and if that doesn't happen you have no real recourse.

"I will lose £10,000, the rest of the site crew will lose up to £20,000 and you know that goes on tenfold probably for all the people affected... the scale of it and magnitude of it is staggering."

Several hundred people including musicians, crew, volunteers, traders and contractors, worked on the Morvala festival over the four-day event at the end of June.

Kernowfornia was expected to attract 4,000 people to East Looe in September - it is not known how many tickets had already been sold before the cancellation was announced.

Ticket holders have been told by GPL the company was "not in a financial position to issue refunds directly".

It advised them to contact their own banks if they paid by debit or credit card.

Kate Jones from Truro bought tickets on her debit card and has not had any luck being refunded.

"I'm furious about what's happened with Kernowfornia," she said.

"I spent over £300 on tickets for my family, we were really looking forward to it and at the moment it doesn't look like I'll get any of that money back."

Jacob McTighe, a freelance musician, stage and events manager from Plymouth in Devon, was technical production manager at Morvala.

He said smaller festivals in the south west often operate with a level of "trust and honesty".

"We are a community here so we try and give people favours and we all muck in to try and give the best show that we can, but obviously on this occasion we've been let down by poor long-term financial planning.

"I think hundreds of thousands of pounds are owed to people that worked really hard for that money."

He said he was "missing out on thousands of pounds" and the list of others affected included suppliers, engineers, bar staff, site crew, litter pickers and car park attendants.

"Everyone in the team was reassured that there was sufficient funding to cover the costs of this year's festival," he said.

"That's why we poured our heart and soul into the event with the hope of coming back next year."

Gav Freke, from St Tudy in Cornwall, runs Remote Power Services and has been providing electrical facilities on the festival circuit for 15 years.

He said he has part paid the crew that worked for him from his own savings, but can't afford to pay them in full because GMP went into administration without paying his invoice.

"My crew I've worked with for very many years are absolutely amazing guys they're like my festival family... we've worked 24-hour shifts in in the pouring rain to make festivals go ahead.

"I'm absolutely devastated that I physically can't pay them. Although I've given them a part payment it doesn't quite pay the bills. So yeah such a lovely bunch of guys and I'm totally devastated."

He added: "The festival industry as a whole in Cornwall is a very tight-knit community and there's so many people which have been mortally wounded by this."

He said some people have been left with "serious financial implications especially when there's rents to pay and mortgages and children to look after".

GPL sole director Jon Stafford has not responded to the BBC's requests but previously issued a statement expressing his "profound sadness".

It said: "This is not a decision we have chosen to make. We have been left with no other option. The financial position of the company is completely unrecoverable, and there is no responsible or realistic course of action that would allow the business to continue trading."

It added "all known creditors will be contacted directly as part of the liquidation process".

"To every artist, supplier, contractor, freelancer, member of staff, volunteer and every individual or business who worked so incredibly hard to make Morvala possible, we are so deeply sorry.

"We know many of you placed your trust in us. Many of you committed months of work, invested your own time and resources, supported us through an incredibly ambitious project and believed in the vision we were trying to create."

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