One of London’s biggest annual music festivals, We Are FSTVL, has been forced to cancel its 2024 edition after heavy rainfall left the planned venue unfit to host the event.
Organizers of the festival had been preparing to welcome tens of thousands of revelers to Dagenham’s Central Park over the weekend of 25-26 May. However, the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham has pulled the plug citing health and safety concerns with the site.
In a statement, the council said its “recent assessment of Central Park, after record levels of rainfall this year, has found the site cannot safely host the physical demands of We Are FSTVL’s equipment and audience.”
The move to the sprawling east London park was meant to be an exciting new chapter for We Are FSTVL after several years at its previous home in Upminster. Festival chiefs had invested significant time and money preparing Central Park, with new stages and immersive art installations planned.
They had also curated a lineup boasting major electronic acts like Chase & Status, Eric Prydz, Jamie Jones and Marco Carola. But those performers will now have to wait until 2025 to take to the We Are FSTVL stage.
A “devastated” crew of organizers released a full statement explaining the cancellation:
We are devastated to announce that for reasons beyond our control, We Are FSTVL 2024 is unable to go ahead.
Last year, when we were looking for a new home, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham offered us the beautiful Central Park and we worked with them to create detailed plans for how the Festival would work this year and be better than ever before. We had invested time and money into the new site, new stages and brought in a new Creative Team to bring the weekend to life with immersive experiences and large art installations, alongside the already fantastic lineup, which we couldn’t wait to share with you.
Sadly, and just days before we were due to attend on-site to start the build, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham accepted that they could not deliver a safe event space that was fit for the purpose of allowing us to stage We Are FSTVL 2024.
In a press release, the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham say that the difficult decision to cancel has been made for health and safety reasons after record levels of rainfall this year.
While the festival organizers did not disclose specifics of what made Central Park unsafe to host the event, the wet grounds clearly posed too much risk after the record-breaking deluges seen across London recently.
The UK has experienced an extraordinarily sodden period, with England alone seeing 1,695.9mm of rainfall between October 2022 and March 2024 – the highest total for any 18-month span since records began in 1836. The previous record was just set the month prior.
Those relentless downpours have left their mark on outdoor events across the country. Just this month, the Cheltenham Jazz Festival was forced to relocate from its traditional Montpellier Gardens due to waterlogged fields.
While the cancellation is undoubtedly gutting for We Are FSTVL’s crew and attendees, public safety has to be the top priority. With the festival’s temporary infrastructure, staging, and crowds, any risk of ground disruption from the saturated soil posed an unacceptable hazard.
Organizers said all ticketholders will receive full refunds, with plans already underway to bring We Are FSTVL back “better than ever before” in 2025 at a location still to be determined.
“We are heartbroken by this decision and can’t wait to dance with you again in 2025 and show you everything we have been working on,” their statement reads.
The drenched grounds of Central Park will get a year off to recover from both the festival preparations and endless months of torrential rains. Whenever and wherever the next We Are FSTVL is held, organizers and revelers alike will be hoping for sunnier skies.
