more festival alternatives offered to BGG ticket holders

Ticket holders for this week's The Big Green Gathering are being offered a number of ticket deals to other festivals as an alternative.

Now BGG ticket holders have a wealth of alternatives offering special deals. Next weekend's Big Chill is offering entrance to their event next weekend for an additional £20 and the BGG will also have a small presence on site.

Also this weekend is Stokes Bay Festival in Hampshire. They are offering a half-price season ticket priced for BGG ticket holders at £50 (adult), £25 (under-16s) for the five day Festival. The half-price offer will also apply to individual day tickets, and an invitation to any traders to any traders who want to go there.

Endorse-It In-Dorset held next weekend at Cranborne Chase, in Dorset is offering BGG Ticket holders tickets on the gate, at a reduced price of £50 for an adult weekend ticket, £15 for a 10-15 yr old, and £5 for under 10's.

The Pontardawe International Music Festival in Wales is offering holders of weekend BGG tickets an equivalent weekend pass for the festival which takes place in the Swansea Valley from 21st-23rd August.They will also get access to the festival campsite for a small charge.

Next year's Sunrise Celebration is also offering ticket swaps for those who have bought festival tickets for Big Green Gathering. They will be exchanging a limited number of full price (not crew) Big Green Gathering tickets. The ticket swap process will be administered by the Big Green Gathering, who will be supplying Sunrise Celebration with a list of ticket holders who have swapped their BGG tickets for Sunrise 2010 ones. Those wishing to do this are asked to leave contacting BGG until after the weekend as they are presently very busy trying to re-group.

Big Green Gathering was due to start today, but was closed down after Mendip District Council supported by Somerset & Avon Police threatened injunction proceedings in High Court over road safety fears amongst other issues, and the organisers surrendered their licence on Sunday.

In 1996 six young music fans died in a head-on collision near Nunney Catch services after the One World music festival, which might have heightened Council fears enough to ensure that they did not have a similar tragedy happen again.

The festival organisers are firmly of the opinion that the move to shut them down was to do with politics because they believe the 'establishment' are anti-green events and radicals. The event would have had people from Transition Towns, Climate Camp, as well as Plane Stupid, and a Climate Camp fund raising bar 'Last Chance Saloon'. Climate Camp demonstrated in London during the G20 meeting, and Plane Stupid have taken direct action at Stansted and Aberdeen airports.

However, no event is allowed to continue without meeting safety criteria, and having taken extensive advice from a prominent QC and other eminent lawyers, who made it clear to the directors of the Big Green Gathering that they did not have enough grounds to stop the injunction as they had no road closure order from the local highways authority, they were left with no other option than to voluntarily surrender the license for the Big Green Gathering 2009.

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