Festival Review
Once again, we are pleased to report that the year long organisation and preparation for the Watstock Festival has paid off. We were lucky enough to enjoy fabulous weather both days which made for a very busy Saturday, and a rather more laid back chilled out Sunday afternoon, but all in all it made it an ideal day out for over 5000 people during the weekend, enjoying not only music, but fairground attractions, good food, and a variety of craft stalls.
The amazing show of bands during the weekend has shown how Watstock has progressed, with bands wanting to return for a second year, and throughout the year a continuous stream of requests to play at our festival, shows that it is fast becoming a popular musical event among musicians too.
With new measures put in place to further offer a more secure, well managed and controlled environment, we were confident that we had covered a number of issues we had highlighted from the previous festival.
The fencing did indeed offer the extra crowd control and keep the festival well contained, and coupled with the Event Guard security throughout the whole event; we managed to keep incidents to a minimum.
The all new Watstock Bar, was a sight to behold with its 50ft long bar stretching across the huge marquee, offering everyone a space at the bar, something which later proved its point when we cleared the bar stock for the whole weekend, by just 10.00pm on Saturday. Fortunately we were able to re-stock on Sunday, and continue until the end of the festival.
We have received requests for funding from the Watstock Festival, from Watlington Adult & Youth Football Clubs, St Peter & Paul Church, Watlington Village Hall, The Millennium Green Trust, The Watlington Patients Group, Watlington C.P School and Watlington Pre-School. We are proud to announce that because of Watstock we are able to donate a total of £8,500.00 to the organisations that applied, makes it all worthwhile doesn’t it?
As organisers we have been humbled by the support we have received from the public, before, during and since the festival. People from the village and from outside the village, worked their socks off for us and we sincerely thank you all. We had over 80 volunteers for the Watstock weekend, some of which have been there from Friday morning until Monday night. You should feel very proud of yourselves, we certainly couldn’t have done it without your help and support.
We have however decided to take a break next year, we want to keep the festival fresh and edgy so we thought a break for us would give us time to recuperate after 3 successful years on the trott, give us time to source new talent and time to raise money towards the next festival in 2012.
So thank you all once again for the massive support you have shown us, please take a look at Triston’s fabulous band review, and we look forward to seeing you all again in 2012
Julia ~ Triston ~ Sarah ~ Angela ~ Robert