Good morning and Happy New Year to you!
Hope you had a lovely festive break.
We are now back to work and starting off planning for 2025. Our first action point was deciding that after 13 years of building something awesome in Petersfield our community Festivals will sadly not be happening this year.
As you may or may not know, we took the decision to switch over the ownership of the events to Petersfield Community Events, the not-for-profit company so we would be able to make the events sustainable and yet with the way the world is at the moment, we were always juggling demands and costs to try and keep things viable. Even with some funding from Councils and sponsorship from local businesses, it was just getting harder and harder to make things work.
After having to cancel the Christmas Festival last minute due to the storm in December we realised, amongst other things, just how dependent we are on the unpredictable weather and how, at a moments notice, our weeks and weeks of planning could be wiped out and there be a huge strain put on the finances and our wellbeing yet again.
We love our community and we will still keep The Petersfield Awards going and yet for our own health and sanity, we are going to take a break from organising the three main Petersfield festivals this year. In these challenging times, we are going to spend some of those freed up hours to work on ourselves and keep our own business running.
It has been really awesome working with you on our events and you have been integral in building them to be as great as they have been and so a massive thank you for all you have done from Ben and myself.
Although it does mean we will need to be cancelling the dates we have booked in with you for 2025, we are still continuing to do our other event just outside of Petersfield, the South Downs Show on 9-10 August.
www.southdownsshow.com
Please have a look at the website at how awesome this event is and see whether your diary might allow you to be a part of this show going forward? It would be so cool to get all of the best bits from our community events into our main summer event if we can make it all work, so please let us know if you are available.
It really is such a shame things have changed so much since the pandemic as it has been constantly getting harder and with all of the new guidelines for events in the pipeline, it will continue to increase and so we need a break from it all.
We will be starting to announce it officially over the coming days but wanted you to hear it first.
Thank you again and see you soon.
