FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Spring 2009
Festival cancelled for another year
This summer's Cannizaro Park Festival in the Italian Garden has been cancelled due to lack of funds. The local consortium which has financed the event for the past three years has opted not to suffer further losses and Merton Council will not intervene to fill the gap. The Wimbledon Guardian has quoted the funding shortfall at £50,000.
A spokesman for the Friends of Cannizaro Park said: "We knew this was likely to happen after the organisers lost money heavily yet again last year. The sponsors have been very loyal but no-one wants to carry on losing money indefinitely." The specially discounted evenings once arranged by the Friends ceased after support declined steeply. At one time they attracted large numbers of members every year.
Successive organisers have either lost money or gone bust since the event started in summer 1989 and the festival was last cancelled altogether in 2003. The company contracted to run it in 2004 managed only a single season before going out of business. Merton then stepped in to revive the festival in 2005 (see two of the performances above from that year) and the local consortium has paid for it since 2006, working in partnership with New Wimbledon Theatre. However the annual costs have risen with the introduction of all-covered seating and hiring of costly nationally known acts.
Last year tickets cost between £20 and £26 and sales were up by 8 per cent from the previous year. More than 10,000 people saw top entertainers such as Jimmy Carr, Bill Bailey and Jason Donovan but there was still no sign of a profit. Peter Beckwith, chairman of Cannizaro Event Limited said: “The festival was bigger and better than ever but last year also saw the largest loss for us. The problem of raising the money for the festival this year has been two-fold: the current recession and the lack of confidence in the level of attendance from local audiences."
The festival has always been handicapped to an extent by the upper limit on seat numbers for space reasons, the lack of convenient parking outside Cannizaro, and the unpredictable weather, although that has not stopped sell-out performances and some fantastic shows over the years.
Maurice Groves, Merton’s cabinet member for community services, said: “We have brought in money for the festival before, but bearing in mind our entire arts budget is £14,500 there’s no way we could find the extra funding.”
Organisers hope to re-launch the two-week festival in 2010. However, the festival has been criticised for abandoning local arts groups in favour of expensive national performers. With a lack of venues and events in Merton for local organisations, the Wimbledon Light Opera Society, which has not performed at Cannizaro since 2006, backed suggestions for a smaller replacement event this summer. Its chair, Diane Norton, said: “There’s definitely the possibility of doing more with the local amateur groups in Merton. Due to a lack of support we’ve been driven to performing outside the borough in Sutton and Fulham, even though we’re based in Wimbledon.”
Concerns that the local economy would suffer from the cancellation were led by Richard Hunter, Chairman of the Wimbledon Village Business Association.He said: “The festival has always created a great atmosphere drawing people into Wimbledon Village and there’s no doubt that we’re going to miss out from that. I completely understand why businesses have reduced their support during such a tough time but this is going to be particularly disappointing for the village’s retailers.”