OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM COTW TEAM!

Hey Wolfpack. We feel that we should keep you all informed with our current challenges bringing you Call of the Wild Festival as you know it. 

Yesterday was a challenging day for Team COTW. We had a lengthy meeting with the Safety Advisory Group (SAG) which includes all relevant authorities. Ahead of this, and after the Government announcement on Monday that we remain in level 3 restrictions, we worked tirelessly on our event planning and risk assessments to amend them into robust working documents for discussion at this meeting. Unfortunately we were hit with a plethora of obstacles and hurdles during the meeting from many parties of the SAG requiring significant changes and supporting evidence. This included the requirement for an all seated event, bar table service, ensuring that as an audience that rule of six and two households apply, extra cleaning contractors, extra security, additional medics, more volunteers, hiring additional toilets, potentially closing showers due to booking and cleaning requirements - the list goes on. As if that were not enough, SAG could not afford us another date for review until late June, literally days before the event. 

All things considered, whilst we feel we could have had all the requirements over the line to bring you a covid secure event, it comes at a massive cost which we simply cannot justify from a business perspective. Secondly, for you as an audience, whilst it would be a tremendous event, it would not be a festival as we know it - we would have had to police everyone to remain seated and encourage social distancing throughout. Lastly, to hold an event with all the scrutiny that the authorities advised means that it is not without commercial risk or reputation to us as festival organisers, to the showground or to any of our many suppliers that make this festival work. 

On this basis, we have made the gut wrenching decision to not go ahead in July as planned. To say we are devastated yet again is an understatement.

Currently we are looking at the possibility of an event in August. As you can imagine, the logistics of this are a massive challenge - which we will wholeheartedly accept - we will of course keep you posted on progress.

For now, we are taking steps to cease selling tickets for the July event with our ticketing partner. Should we need to, we will reschedule to May 2022, with all existing tickets rolling over. As with previous rescheduling, there will be the option to refund should you be unable to attend (we pride ourselves on this policy) - again this will be dealt with by Gigantic and of course we will keep you informed of when the window opens.

HOWEVER, we would really appreciate it if you could rollover your tickets. The support we receive from you is pivotal, having had no monetary backing/grants from any organisation to date.
We thank you for all your continued support - we are an empty field without you.

Remember, it’s not about how hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.
 

Ceri Davies
Presenter and Co-Director