Nottingham’s Detonate Halloween event at Nottingham Race Course was shut down last Saturday (29th October) due to health and safety risks, prompting a backlash from those in attendance.
The festival, which hosted the likes of Wiley, My Nu Leng, Newham Generals and Kurupt FM, was forced to shut down after a series of incidents related to overcrowding.
Disappointed attendees took to change.org calling for “a full or at least a 50% refund” for the time payed for but lost.
You can see the full petition statement here.
According to the Festival’s website: “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.”
‘[Nottingham Police] told Impact they had nothing to do with the actual closing down of the event’
Detonate explained the precautions they took to avoid the situation, “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.”
Nottingham Police aided the situation, however, they told Impact they had nothing to do with the actual closing down of the event.
Owen Morris, third year management student said: “It was obviously too busy as soon as we arrived, once we were in, the queues to actually get into the tents were huge. [I’m] quite annoyed as we only saw one act we wanted to see and it was clearly oversold and poorly planned.”
Impact are currently awaiting a response from the Detonate team regarding the closure and their response to the petition that is coming to close to 2,500 signatures.
Ellie O’Donnell
