There is hope EDABL Guernsey’s summer food festival may still go ahead despite the cancellation of its May and June events.
The group, also known as Eat, Drink & Be Local, is considering a scaled-down festival for the end of August, depending on government restrictions on social gatherings.
‘We would very much like to put on the food festival in one form or another. It wouldn’t be as big as the event we had planned, but I still think we could do something, and it would be a brilliant thing for the community – a real celebration of not being locked down anymore,’ said EDABL chair Charlotte Dickson, who will review the situation at the end of May.
‘I had booked a celebrity chef, who I’ve cancelled, but if the festival goes ahead, we can do something low key, just local food and local music.’
EDABL Guernsey, which champions local producers, has cancelled Seafront Sunday events due to take place on 24 May and 21 June. It has yet to decide whether the 26 July and 9 August events will proceed.
‘The rationale behind cancelling, rather than an endless postponement, was down to a number of reasons. Some of the vendors had some really exciting stuff planned – one of them was getting equipment over from the UK and Europe. I didn’t want anyone committing to that kind of expenditure only for the event to be cancelled,’ said Charlotte.
‘Also, I don’t know, when this is over, how big people’s appetites are going to be for big public events. We also have to be respectful of the fact we are government funded and as part of our KPIs we have to provide events for the tourist industry to promote to visitors, and we can’t deliver this right now.’
Depending on how and when social distancing requirements are relaxed, Charlotte said EDABL was open to the possibility of pop-up, bespoke events this summer.
‘We’re not shutting the door. We’d love to do some smaller events if we can. We had some really cool ideas planned for this year and, depending on the time scale, some of them might still go ahead.’
