A THREE-day festival set to take place on Oxford’s South Park next weekend has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales and rumours that one of its big name stars had pulled out.

The OxfordOxford festival was to feature three separate days of music, cinema and community activity and was due to start next Friday.

More than 20,000 people were expected over the course of the festival, which, it was hoped, would have become an annual event.

The line-up featured rock act Klaxons, hip-hop star Katy B, Mercury nominated artist Michael Kiwanuka and former Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes from Wheatley. Artists and ticket holders said they were ‘gutted’ by the cancellation.

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OxfordOxford was being organised by Eleven 11 Events to promote Oxford’s contribution to art and culture.

Oxford Mail:

Katy B.

Spokesman Sean Harwood blamed sluggish sales and what he called “an unsubstantiated claim” in unspecified sectors of the media “that caused uncertainties surrounding Katy B’s performance”.

Tickets for the festivalwere priced at £16.75 for next Friday’s cinema day and £32.50 for Saturday’s music event, although Oxford-based website wegottickets.com had been selling discounted music tickets for £20.

Mr Harwood refused to reveal how many tickets had been sold.

The company’s director Owen Kent and project manager Pete Monaghan are both Oxford Brookes University graduates who were inspired to run a festival in the park by their time in the city.

Their firm had previously been involved in the running of aspects of the London 2012 Olympics, the 2005 Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, and the Glastonbury and Reading festivals.

the firm said full refunds would be available to ticket holders from vendors.

Although heavily backed by Oxford City Council, the council had not put any funding into the event.

Rachel Fletcher, 39, and Paul Jeffery, 40, from Cowley, had already bought tickets to the event. Ms Fletcher said: “I am gutted. I was really looking forward to it.

“I haven’t heard anyone talking about it, I don’t know if it was poorly marketed but we’re really surprised and disappointed.”

Oxford Mail:

Rachel Fletcher and Paul Jeffery with their OxfordOxford tickets.

Dozens of local companies, charities, community and sports groups were set to join Sunday’s community event.

They included East Oxford’s Pegasus Theatre. Head of marketing Gill Jaggers said: “We had various things planned and had printed some materials. It is a small expense, but it is quite disappointing.”

Oxford band Robot Swans were due to play. Band member Matt Bradshaw said: “It was going to be our biggest gig to date, so we’re pretty dejected about the news.

“We delayed the recording of our first album by a few weeks to make sure we were ready for this.”

However, he said artists would be clubbing together to play an alternative show at the Art Bar, in Cowley Road, next Saturday, being organised by artist Oli Steadman of Oxford folk-pop band Stornoway.

The alternative event is being dubbed TigFest, and is promoted through the This Is Good Music (tigmus.com) crowd-sourcing website, which allows music fans to pledge money to stage events.

Bands signed up include Oxford acts Flights of Helios, Robot Swans, Balloon Ascents, Jordan O’Shea and Count Drachma.

Proceeds will go to bands, with a donation to Oxford music organisation Audioscope, which raises money for the homelessness charity Shelter, and was set to host livemusic on the Sunday.

  • TigFest is set to take place next Saturday. Tickets are £10 from tigfest.com

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