{"id":2456237,"date":"2026-06-12T12:35:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2456237"},"modified":"2026-06-12T12:35:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:35:57","slug":"music-festival-in-dorset-scrapped-as-organiser-vows-never-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/music-festival-in-dorset-scrapped-as-organiser-vows-never-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Music festival in Dorset scrapped as organiser vows &#8216;never again&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The festival began as a free, one-day, community event in 2023, attended by about 8,000 people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Polkey previously said its popularity had been unexpected, putting pressure on parking and traffic, so fencing and ticketing was introduced in 2024, along with a park-and-ride.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">About 2,500 people attended in 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Stir Events sought permission for a three-day festival in 2026 but scaled it back to two days following objections, with 4,500 tickets available each day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">During the licensing consultation, Highcliffe and Walkford Parish Council was among 22 respondents citing concerns about noise, antisocial behaviour and transport issues, according to the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/lnp\/ldrs\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Local Government Reporting Service.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But it awarded the event a \u00a310,000 grant in 2025 and \u00a38,500 in 2024, and said it was expecting an application for 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Polkey said she had not applied, anticipating it would be refused.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The parish council said the cancellation was &#8220;a loss to music lovers&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A spokesperson said: &#8220;It&#8217;s been a fixture here for three years and the parish council has provided significant grant funding to keep it going.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This cancellation has come as a great surprise and will be a huge blow to everyone who&#8217;s worked so hard on it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ticket holders are being refunded.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Headliners Robert Arkins Commitments said they would perform at the Old Fire Station, Bournemouth, instead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.bbc.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The festival began as a free, one-day, community event in 2023, attended by about 8,000 people. Polkey previously said its popularity had been unexpected, putting pressure on parking and traffic, so fencing and ticketing was introduced in 2024, along with a park-and-ride. About 2,500 people attended in 2025. Stir Events sought permission for a three-day [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2456238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2456237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Music-festival-in-Dorset-scrapped-as-organiser-vows-never-again.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2456237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2456239,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2456237\/revisions\/2456239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2456238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2456237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2456237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2456237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}