Appleby Fair will NOT become a licenced and ticketed festival – says new report
Appleby Fair should not become a ticketed and licensed event and should instead remain “a large informal and often spontaneous gathering” – says a wide-ranging independent report published last week.
The report was commissioned in 2022 to provide strategic advice to the local councils and the Appleby Horse Fair Multi Agency Strategic Coordination Group (MASCG), a group of authorities, voluntary agencies and Gypsy and Traveller representatives, who come together every year to support the annual event which can draw over 40,000 visitors over the weekend it takes place in June.
One of the main topics the report covers is whether Appleby Fair should become a licenced and ticketed event in an arena, and whether it would solve any problems that generally tend to crop up every year that the fair takes place – like people arriving too early and some anti-social behaviour.
At the time the report was commissioned Billy Welch, who sits on the Appleby Fair support group and is the annual lease-holder for Fair Hill, told the Travellers’ Times that turning the fair into a licensed and ticketed event “is not as simple as some people like to think.”
“Fair-goers already pay to stay in the campsites and to park their cars, so to some extent Appleby is already ticketed,” added Billy Welch.
“But you can’t charge people for a ticket for being on a public highway in Cumbria, or for walking through Appleby Town to the River Eden, any more than you can charge people to visit Blackpool and go to the beach on a bank holiday weekend.”
The report – nearly three years in the making – appears to agree with Billy’s assessment.
“It would be extremely challenging to try and make the Fair a fully regulated event,” stated one authority who responded to the report.
“A solution is for a better managed Fair as opposed to attempting to move it to a licenced event. The best way forward would be to better manage the Fair both from the point of Travellers, local residents, and local businesses.”
The report’s authors also contacted an organisation that represents carnival and festival promoters across the UK to ask them if they thought Appleby Fair could become a ticketed event taking place behind a fence – like a music festival.
The response from Alternative Independent Festival members was unanimous - none of them considered Appleby Fair in any way comparable to a Festival in traditional terms, and none felt that it was an event that could be fully managed, licenced and ticketed – and not one single festival promotor would want to take it on.
So, it looks like Appleby Fair will remain more or less as it is.
Download and read the report below (although the report is dated July 2024 – it was only released to the public last week):
TT News
(Photograph: Appleby 2022 by Bela Varadi)