Launching a new festival in 2024 was never going to be easy but in November Ben Street and the team behind multi-venue Norwich festival Wild Paths announced a partnership with independent music company ATC Group to launch a 10,000-capacity festival, Wild Fields, at Raynham Estate in North Norfolk next month.

Since then, the UK festival sector has seen more than 50 events cancelled. Street has shown remarkable determination to press ahead with the launch at a hugely challenging time for festivals. Here, he recounts the huge hurdles he has had to overcome in order to press ahead with a reconfigured launch event at Earlham Park, Norwich, on 16-17 August.

We’d planned and curated a four-day, six-stage camping festival in a beautiful, rural Norfolk setting, with over 100 bands and DJs, wellness activities and outdoor dining experiences.

It was set to be something truly special but alas sales were really slow over the first two months and with production costs escalating (from additional trakway to water and WiFi, staging and insurance) it was clear the numbers just weren’t adding up and the forecast was looking pretty grim.

After a conversation with our partners at ATC we decided the only responsible and realistic move was to cancel. Cancelling something at that scale is messy and it was a really testing few days for me as I tried to navigate through the process and weather some angry phone calls. After a turbulent week of long emails and chunky cancellation costs I decided that I couldn’t let the last 10 months of relentless work and planning go to waste and made a phone call to a friend on the council events team.

A couple of years prior I’d been chatting to him about running a festival at a city-centre park and when I explained my current situation he checked the dates and said there was a booking lightly pencilled in but if I wanted them they were mine.

I took a day to consider and then leapt back in, making calls to agents, local institutions, old partners and press bodies. Initial responses were a little guarded and cautious but after some reassurances and some more long phone calls we had a festival again. Fast forward to July and we’re only a month out from Wild Fields maiden voyage.

It’s a two day festival now in a city-centre park, we retained our festival headliners – Ezra Collective, Kae Tempest and SBTRKT – and added some live street art on a 30ft graff wall plus a range of industry talks and climate debates on a bus stage.

It’s a socially conscious music festival featuring partners like MSF, Climate Live and Beryl trying to have a positive impact and challenge audiences whilst also platforming some of the best artists on the planet. Being closer to the city, a cheaper ticket price and an amazing marketing team have helped sales to pick up and we’re all feeling excited to finally be able to deliver and enjoy Wild Fields Festival 2024

 

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