CANCELLATION
28 January 2022
We are writing to express our disappointment at your decision to cease SPILL involvement with this year’s annual Pyre Parade. To have made no attempt at any dialogue with us about your thinking until you had made up your mind is incredibly poor form and we are quite shocked that you couldn’t have found a better way to share this thinking. We may well have been open minded enough and understanding of any decisions, should you have chosen to pick up the phone or even spark up an email thread to share your thoughts and to jointly explore future options. This seems like a huge oversight, and a serious underestimation on your behalf of what the Pyre Parade has brought to SPILL over the last few years. You have also made no attempt at debriefing last year’s event with us and so this, coupled with the manner in which you have now communicated, leaves us feeling disregarded, betrayed, and really sad that this situation could have easily been avoided.
To step away from the Pyre Parade without any consideration to consult with us as artists is staggering enough. However, we also note that Robert received your email sharing this information two working days before SPILL convened two focus groups specifically asking a range of stakeholders what they thought of the festival’s free, outdoors and participatory projects. We have also spoken with a number of those participants - local authority and venue partners, funders, local business people, and event participants - and know that a strong feeling for many people is that the Pyre Parade remaining annual is of high local cultural importance. You forming a unilateral decision before those focus groups took place does not engender trust and appears very short sighted. The Pyre Parade has taken a decade to create. It took many years of running regular events week in week out onsite at the Think Tank to build up enough local trust and momentum to then take activities out on to the streets in a way people could believe in. There were so many carefully considered strategic developments along that journey to enable the event you saw back in October, brimming with community enthusiasm and trust. You have said that your decision is based on a feeling of needing to find your own voice and make your own mark publicly. We caution you against putting your own professional interests before those of the town or the people of the town.
Attendees for the Pyre Parade are devoted. As we know, from acorns oak trees grow and we have heard from a number of sources that the most recent event would have been considerably larger were it not for Covid concerns. Many people continue to express their desire for the Pyre Parade to be annual, with a sense of pride that the town now has this new custom. However, we are two independent artists without any funding behind us, and we hope you understand the implications here - you removing SPILL's engagement with the Pyre Parade means it is highly unlikely to happen this year. Because we expect that information to land so badly across the community, we unfortunately will not be able to support you or the board in any fallout from that.
The Rough Band