More than 2,000 people have signed a petition demanding for their money back after Detonate Festival was shut down early.
Detonate Festival Halloween, an underground music event, was stopped three hours early on Saturday (October 29) following ‘health and safety concerns’.
Organisers say a fence near the main tent was breached, causing a crowd surge, just after 8pm.
The festival’s health and safety officer called for it to be stopped, with police helping to clear the site when too many people tried to get into the main tent.
Organisers have already aplogised and said in a statement: “We are currently working out how we can compensate people and will update very soon.”
A Change.org user called Anonymous Freelancer has now set up a petition called ‘Detonate: Refund for loss of enjoyment, cut short event and breach of personal safety.’
Change.org is a website for people to create petitions and to start campaigns.
The health and safety was poor and people will be expecting a refund
The petition also contains an open letter where Anonymous Freelancer wrote: “The fact that the health and safety of this event was poor a lot of people are disappointed and dissatisfied and will be expecting a full refund.
“People are very upset in this matter and do not feel that they have been heard and the majority of people believe they did not have a good time at all.
“This petition is to gain the attention of the event planners and to be acknowledged by the management as human beings to be treated fairly.
“The only solution, a full or at least a 50 per cent refund should be issues [sic] at least due to the three hours lost on the event ending early and the remainders of having to wait around for hours on end for the lack of organisation for your oversold and unorganised event.
“For the loss of enjoyment such as missing the best and mains acts you had to offer due to closing early, and for the general lack of health and safety and the endangerment of the public.”
People who attended the event at Nottingham Racecourse took to Twitter to vent their frustration.
Can’t believe detonate festival got closed down early. I hope i get some of my money back
— susie (@susie__doe) October 29, 2016
Imagine going to an all day festival and going home at 8.05. cheers detonate
— joe (@afroslut_) October 30, 2016
Detonate was sooooo good till it got shut down😒😒
— Nadine Martin (@NadiineMartin) October 29, 2016
Detonate Halloween – Organiser’s statement in full from Sunday
Firstly, and most importantly, we’d like to apologise to everyone for yesterday’s event being cut short, and for the problems that lead to it.
We are truly gutted that an event which we’ve been working on for the last six months ended the way it did.
We’d like to thank everyone for leaving the site in a calm, orderly way.
Our Health & Safety officer called for the show to be stopped due to concerns over people’s safety.
The police supported the decision and helped us clear the site.
The safety issue was due to the majority of people wanting to be in one tent, which caused large queues.
When some of the surrounding fence was breached and crowds surged, action had to be taken to avoid people being injured.
An enormous amount of planning goes into putting on an event like this, with consultation, input, and stipulations from agencies including Police and Local Authority from the moment the licence is applied for, right up until the day.
We worked on a capacity for the event based on our experience of running events at the same venue before, and with the agreement of the parties involved.
Flow of people is estimated based on capacities of each area, popularity of the acts which are on at the same time in each arena, and dynamic assessments on the day.
We surveyed our ticket holders in the lead up to the event by asking them which acts they most wanted to see, and used this data to programme set times.
Queuing systems were in place to prevent any one tent becoming overcrowded.
In the case of The Boneyard, this meant that people inside didn’t leave, even when relatively small acts were on, as they could see it would take a while to get back in.
As a result, there was very little flow of people in and out of that arena and long queues of people who were rightfully frustrated by not being allowed inside the tent.
When this situation worsened and started to pose a risk to people’s safety, the music was switched off.
Closing just one tent wasn’t an option as it would have caused the same issues at other arenas.
From then on we had no choice but to start a phased closure of the site.
We are currently working out how we can compensate people and will update very soon.
Again, we sincere apologies [sic] to everyone who attended.
