You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Chipping Norton Literary Festival director Jenny Dee has told The Bookseller that it was "too terrifying" to continue the event in the current financial climate.
Her comments come days after the end of ChipLitFest was announced, and Dee acknowledged "everything is more expensive, but... people aren’t necessarily earning any more money".
Dee, who has run the festival since 2016, said the fact that ChipLit—organised by volunteers—was in a small, rural Cotswolds town was part of why it was so "vital" and "significant", but also posed one of its main challenges.
"Accommodation for us was a real problem as a small rural town," she told The Bookseller. "We can’t expect authors to just pop along. It’s not just down the road. And so we’ve got to provide transport, we’ve got to provide accommodation. Putting up 80 authors across the weekend is quite challenging, just in terms of the hotels, and we’re in the middle of the Cotswolds, which is quite an expensive place."
Dee described how a lack of "confidence at this point in the year that we’ve got the resources to meet the cost of the production, of accommodation, of travel for our authors", which has contributed to the decision to close shop.
"We’ve had a lot of very supportive local businesses sponsoring us and ticket sales are strong, but they haven’t been strong enough to give us that sense of confidence," she said, as cost-of-living pressures continue. "Train prices are up. Petrol is up. Hotels are up. Pub meals. Everything is more expensive, but also we’re acutely aware that people aren’t necessarily earning any more money."
Dee said people expected the area to be "awash with cash", given the Cotswolds location, but that this was not the case. "Chippy itself is a very ordinary town. There are levels of deprivation that would probably surprise people, but it’s not just a kind of financial deprivation. It’s also cultural deprivation," she said.
"So if you’ve lost your bus service from the village into Chipping Norton, then the bus service on into Oxford is really expensive or much less frequent, all of these things can build up to a point where people aren’t accessing the arts. We really valued being able to bring authors into schools, bring authors into local venues. It felt very vital and significant... But the economies of scale are challenging. There aren’t that many tickets that can be sold for the room in the back of the pub."
She also said publishers were also reconsidering sending authors to the festival. "I know that publishers are beginning to wonder how much time it is worth giving their authors away from work, or away from London or Manchester to come somewhere for the weekend," she said. "Our book sale conversion, from event to sale, was strong. We’ve had wonderful booksellers. But there’s just a limit. Our biggest venue has a capacity of 220, so it’s limited... There’s just a limit to the money that we have been able to make in the last couple of years post-covid."
Liz Sich, the acting chair of trustees, cited the "current financial climate and funding challenges" which have "sadly made it impossible to continue to stage an annual festival" in the original announcement on Monday (14th October). The festival was founded in 2012 by Clare Mackintosh and it has since welcomed more than 1,000 writers in more than 550 events and delivered a schools programme to at least 10,000 children and young people.
Literary organisers discussed struggles in spring 2023 while the Baillie Gifford sponsorship controversy saw nine festivals cut ties with the asset manager.