Forum topic: Palmers Green Festival 2019

Briefings to the volunteers who have kindly committed their time to make sure the PG Festival goes as smoothly as ever on Sunday 1st September kicked off over the weekend and will continue right up to the week before festival. Thanks to all of them; it simply couldn’t happen without people putting their own skin and time into it.

We took delivery of fifteen thousand site maps today. The majority will be door dropped during the 3rd week of August, while the remainder will be available to be handed out at the event – so if you want to help for an hour or so on the day there’s a simple task (for anyone over 15).

The photo here shows the giant postcards we’ll be distributing to selected sites. The design reflects the site map (now on the web site) and will also be used on the new banners that will go up around the park in a week or so.

Timetables for Speakers Corner, Bandstand music and Pop-Up events are now available on the festival web site so do take a look. As always, plenty for every taste – we hope.

There’s never a dull or panic-free moment when prepping for Festival, so a month back when we heard there was a run on portaloos for 1 September and our usual supplier couldn’t assist we panicked. So after much searching it’s today’s top news that TPH London has stepped in with 6 Tardis loos plus one disabled friendly Tardis. Costing over £700 we’re hoping for maximum value for money so don’t hang back – come along and give them a go on Sunday 1st September, just like Festival itself, entry is free.

And on panic free moments, what to do about the weather? What if Festival had been today (Saturday 10 August)? There were yellow weather warnings in place yesterday. Would we have cancelled and pre advised 100+ stallholders, as many exhibitors and thousands of potential attendee it was off, or run the risk and proceeded? Today we’ve had huge rain for very short spells, lovely sun, near constant wind and particularly high gusts. Would we have gone ahead but perhaps cancelled the helicopter ride and inflatables? What when sizeable branches started to fall in the gusts – stop and evacuate? There’s risk to people, the (listed) park grounds, stallholder income and more to consider.
It’ll be real life soon enough and we’re now currently war-gaming what we would do versus the weather on a rolling day by day basis, looking ahead 7, 3, and 1 day plus intraday.
Would you be happy making the call and say – it’s too risky, NO GO or, stop and evacuate? Then join the team for Festival 2020, your adrenaline may never be the same again.