BLOC Weekend is cancelled

The Bloc Weekender Festival was been forced to close early for reasons of health and safety on its opening night, and today's festival will not take place.

The festival, which was taking place at the newly opened London Pleasure Gardens in East London having relocated from Butlins Resort, in Somerset, had been overwhelmed by the number of attendees taking advantage of the relatively local venue and international artists. The line up was being headlined by rappers Snoop Dogg and Doom with electronic act Amon Tobin, amongst numerous other DJs across the site.

A statement from organisers on the festival's website, (here) says:

"By now everyone will have heard that Bloc 2012 was closed due to crowd safety concerns.

We are all absolutely devastated that this happened, but the safety of everyone on site was paramount.

Given the situation on the ground, we feel that it was the right decision to end the show early.

Bloc will not open on Saturday 7th July so please don't come to the site.

Stand by for full information on refunds.."

Yesterday the site of the London Pleasure Gardens, a sixty thousand square metre site on Victorian Docklands, felt unfinished (although it's an on going project due to progress into 2013) and Bloc had added some temporary structures, to the Gardens' own permanently installed venues.

The sheer volume of people arriving meant that festival-goers faced long waits, with some spending over two hours to enter the site. Once in, lack of adequate security and crowd management around the festival lead to long queues entering the various tents and the Stubnitz party boat moored on the dockside. By early evening the main stage and several other tents had already reached maximum capacity, with venue staff denying further entry to other music fans and crowds of people were stuck outside waiting.



The conditions around the festival reached breaking point shortly before Snoop Dogg was due to come on stage where police had set up a cordon around the approach to the main stage. As our photos show, anyone who wanted to get in to see the headline event was denied entry and officers were advising people to head for the exits as the festival would shortly be closed due to unspecified health and safety issues. It was later uncovered that the main stage was closed after Doom's set, meaning that Snoop Dogg was not able to go on stage.

As the night had meant to continue on into the early hours of Saturday morning, this has lead to a number of disappointed fans either leaving or hanging around the Pleasure Gardens, not able to believe the news. During the night London Pleasure Gardens, the venue holders issued the following statement:"We can confirm that this morning at 00:45, following advice from the Metropolitan Police, Bloc was subject to a controlled shut down due to health and safety concerns.... Our number one concern is always public safety, and sometimes tough decisions need to be made by on-site security, but we always act as we believe is necessary at the time to best protect visitors."

Today headliners Orbital were due to be joined by Flying Lotus, Gary Numan, Battles,ATOL = Modeselektor + Marcel Dettmann + Shed, Appart, Four Tet, Arpanet, James Blake, Space Dimension Controller, Cosmin TRG, L-Vis 1990, and more.

Tickets were priced from £99 for the weekend, and those wanting refunds are asked to wait for details to appear on the official website.

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