A group of festival organisers and grassroots venues have launched a “pioneering, gamechanging music collective” to counter what they say is the slow collapse of the UK’s alternative live circuit.
Blaming soaring costs and corporate dominance for pushing dozens of smaller events to close, the not-for-profit festival will bring together independent festivals, venues and collectives to share resources, cut costs and pool audiences.
Led by Si Chai, the founder of Chai Wallahs, the Where It All Began festival – scheduled for next spring – has been backed by the Music Venue Trust. Freddie Fellowes, the founder of the Secret Garden Party festival, has offered to host the event on his family’s farm in Cambridgeshire.
“The current independent festival model has become unsustainable, pressured and too financially stressful for most organisers since Covid, which means a wealth of incredible grassroots artists are being denied a fair opportunity to perform and carve out their own careers,” said Chai. “I’ve got a plan to save it that will work, but it needs everybody to get involved.”
The cooperative will operate as a Community Benefit Society, with participants co-owning and co-programming the festival. A public crowdfunding campaign will launch later this year, offering members a stake in how the event is run.
“This is a rescue plan,” Chai said. “We’re not here to compete with the independent scene. We’re here to help.”
The model, organisers say, is designed to reduce production and transport costs by up to 40%, while marketing will rely on shared databases rather than expensive commercial campaigns. The aim is to create a replicable blueprint that could stabilise parts of the sector most vulnerable to market shocks.
Those shocks have already been severe. According to the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), 78 UK festivals were cancelled or closed in 2024 – more than twice the number lost the year before. The AIF blames a combination of rising insurance premiums, energy costs, licensing fees and exclusive supplier deals as the main culprits.
More worrying, said John Rostron, the chief executive of the AIF, was a cultural shift that would heavily impact the future of the UK’s music scene. “Where small festivals once served as testing grounds for emerging artists, they are now struggling to survive in an industry increasingly skewed towards multinational operators like Live Nation,” he said.
Live Nation Entertainment, which helped launch the careers of stars including Adele, Ed Sheeran and Stormzy, was formed in 2010 after a merger with Ticketmaster. It was a controversial launch, initially opposed by the UK’s competition watchdog. Now the US-based company runs all but one of the UK’s major festivals and collectively sells a quarter – or 880,000 – of all festival tickets.
A Live Nation spokesperson agreed that “pressures on festivals are felt from top to bottom, with costs rising significantly”. But, they added: “Independent festivals are where many artists take their first steps and where fans discover music they love for life. Thanks to the popularity and success of some of our established festivals, we’re able to partner with and invest in independent festivals and events such as the Great Escape, First Fifty and the BBC Introducing stages at Reading and Leeds.”
Chai said Where It All Began was not attempting to scale up or rival that dominance. Instead, it is designed to protect what remains.
Already, nine independent venues and collectives have signed on to take part in the first edition. More are expected to join before the public campaign opens.
Rostron believes that Chai’s model is “pioneering and gamechanging”. He added: “It is an interesting and creative potential solution to the current crisis that might just get us over the line by sharing the risk of holding a festival that is now too great to be shouldered by any one organiser on their own.”
Fellowes said the new model was “necessary, hopeful and long overdue”.
“It fills a vital role in the development, patronage and support of artists, without which the growth of creativity will be stunted,” he said.
But Chai said the collective was not dealing in hope. It was, he said, focused on survival. “If this works, it won’t just be a festival,” he said. “It will be proof that independents still have power when they act together.”
