Bluedot Festival to take fallow year in 2024 to recover after rain-soaked edition

3 October, 2023

Bluedot Festival

Bluedot Festival will be taking a break in 2024 to allow the site to “recover and regenerate” following trouble with torrential rain this year.

The event, which is  held at Cheshire’s Jodrell Bank Observatory, had to cancel day tickets for the final day of this year’s edition because the rain had made “day ticket holder car park, pick-up and drop-off point and entrances impassable due to standing water”. Weekend pass holders who had left the site were also not allowed to return.

A representative for the festival said in an official statement that the festival weekend saw the highest level of July rainfall ever recorded at the site, and therefore it “desperately” needed time to recover.

They added that the festival’s mission was one of “sincere love and respect for the earth and environment we are lucky to be part of” and the site had taken “a lot of strain”.
“This July, that earth itself took a lot of strain,” they said, referencing record-breaking temperatures that were reached across the world this summer.

The statement continued: “We have patiently waited to see what the effects of this have been on the land itself. We have now sadly reached the judgement that the ground on which the bluedot universe is built desperately needs some time to recover; a period of rest during which the soil will recover and regenerate. We are, as Carl Sagan put it, in very bad trouble if we don’t understand the planet we’re trying to save.

“We had grand ambitions for our 2024 edition, but are nonetheless excited for the future, buoyed by the Artemis mission to take humanity back to the moon for the first time in 56 years. We cannot wait to join in the excitement with you.”

Bluedot 2023 welcomed headliners Pavement, Roisin Murphy, Grace Jones and Leftfield alongside a stacked supporting bill.

Django Django, CMAT, Lava La Rue, Big Joanie, Annie Mac and many more are also on the bill.

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