A Gofundme Page has been set up to support the 2020 Laugharne Weekend Arts festival that takes place in Laugharne in south Wales from Friday, 27 March – Sunday, 29 March.
The annual festival unexpectedly lost its £20,000 grant due to the fact that tickets went on sale before the grant had been confirmed. There is no right of appeal although the cut does only apply to 2020 so the festival can re-apply for 2021.
While it is not specifically a comedy festival a number of notable comedians have performed there in recent years including Robin Ince, Susan Murray and Nick Revell. In fact Revell was voted Favourite Act of the Laugharne Weekend in 2019 and is due to return there in 2020. The festival also has the word "laugh" in its title.
Already confirmed for the next weekend include Mark Thomas, Robin Ince, Nick Revell, Susan Murray, Jeremy Deller, John Niven, Luke Wright, Jess Phillips and Wreckless Eric.
Previous guests include Ray Davies, Patti Smith, Tracey Thorn, Michael Sheen and Mick Jones.
John Williams, who is one of the people behind the festival says: "Every year since we first started the festival in 2007 we have received an annual grant from the Arts Council of Wales (ACW), lately at a level of £20,000 per year. That's a significant contribution to an overall budget of around £70,000. This funding has been essential to the festival, and has helped us to make it the unique,culturally rich and beautifully eccentric weekend that it is.
As always, we've been busy organising next year's festival. We've booked acts and venues and accommodation. We've put tickets on sale and sold most of them already. And we've done this on the reasonable assumption that we would get our regular funding. But now the ACW have suddenly announced they won't be giving us any funding.* To make matters worse, they had reached this decision on November 25, but only let us know by email this Wednesday, December 18. This has left us right up against Xmas/New Year and without enough time to go to any other funding bodies. Without this money, the festival is in jeopardy.
