OxfordOxford may be cancelled but that doesn’t mean the music can’t go on. Tim Hughes reports

It should have been one of the biggest weekends of the year.

A three-day festival of music, cinema and community events celebrating the culture of Oxford – taking place right in the heart of the city on South Park.

With a line-up featuring Klaxons, Katy B and Wheatley lad and former Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes, the OxfordOxford festival looked like a cracker – with loads of young Oxford bands also taking part.

But, as we all now know, it wasn’t to be. With barely a week to go, the team behind the festival, Eleven 11 Events, pulled the plug, citing poor ticket sales and unsubstantiated rumours that Katy B was pulling out.

While regular punters were disappointed, the artists who were billed to play were gutted.

But, as they say, you can’t keep a good man down – particularly if they are welding a guitar or a set of drumsticks – and within minutes of the cancellation, Oxford’s finest were rallying around to salvage their own event from the wreckage.

The result is TigFest, an all-dayer staged by Oxford-based crowd-sourcing ticket site This Is Good Music – or Tigmus – and PinDrop, the promotions company run by Seb Reynolds of the band Flights of Helios.

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Taking place at the Art Bar (formerly the Bullingdon – or ‘Bully’) in Cowley Road, Saturday’s show features many of the Oxford acts set to play on South Park the same day, along with other acts who would have played Sunday’s community event.

It is headlined by space-folk-drone-rockers Flights of Helios, with other sets by Balloon Ascents, Robot Swans, After The Thought, Jordon O’Shea, and Count Drachma – featuring brothers Oli and Rob Steadman from Cowley folk-pop stars Stornoway. Oli, and Stonoway’s session trumpet player Dr Thomas Hodgson are the brains behind Tigmus, a pledge-based ticket-buying system where events only take place if enough supporters pledge to back it, and where the proceeds go to the artists rather than booking agents.

Saturday’s show will also see a donation made to Oxford music organisation Audioscope, which raises money for the homelessness charity Shelter, and was set to host live music at the festival on Sunday.

Oli said: “We heard about the cancellation at 2pm on Friday and by 3pm we had made the decision to team up with other bands to put on our own event. We thought we’d take the lead because crowdsourcing is a good way of gauging support.”

He added: “This event is an unexpected but happy celebration of the Oxford music scene coming together. It involves people like Seb Reynolds of PinDrop, pulling together to bring something magical out of what would have been an empty date. It would normally take time to do something like this, but it has come from dedication to music.” And he is particularly proud of the diverse line-up. “It is really representative of where we are in Oxford,” he said.

“There’s everything from the folk-tinged psychedelia of Balloon Ascents, through grime and electronica to the noise-drone of Flights of Helios, who earlier this summer took their sound to Glastonbury. It really is the cream of the crop of the current scene. And it is happening because Oxford wants it to happen.”

The event will be the last opportunity to see Count Drachma – which plays songs rooted in the Steadman’s native South Africa – in its current incarnation. “This will be the last performance with our founding members,” said Oli. “We have already lost half of the band to the States.”

Flights of Helios keyboardist Seb, said the event would prove a great alternative to the doomed festival. He said: “We are of course gutted that OxfordOxford could not go ahead after so much hard work on the part of the promoters, their partner organisations and the bands.

“Since the Radiohead spectacular in South Park back in 2001 Oxford has been crying out for such an event and I really hope that it can happen next year. In the meantime myself and Oli had the same idea at the same time to try and put on at least the local acts who were being left with a big hole in their weekends.

“Hopefully the word will get out to all the disappointed punters and we can have a big old knees-up at the Bully. The line up is excellent. It’s a shame that not all of the bands could make the rearranged date but the show must go on!”

GO ALONG

Tickets are £8 from wegottickets.com/event/291865

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