Member Article

Chase Park Festival launches crowdfunding campaign

Gateshead’s Chase Park Festival is calling on the public and the region’s businesses to help cement its position as one of the North East’s ‘most forward thinking’ music festivals after launching a new crowdfunding campaign.

The festival, which went independent for the first time this year, has launched the campaign on Crowdfunder to help secure future events and ensure the festival remains a fixture on the region’s summer festival calendar.

The fully inclusive music festival is one of only three festivals in the UK to have been awarded a Gold Level of Access by leading disability charity Attitude is Everything, owing to its focus on making the event as accessible as possible for both disabled music fans and musicians.

Chase Park Festival is scheduled to take part again in August 2017, however organiser Alistair McDonald said that now that the festival expanded from a one-day event to a multi-day programme, it faces added running costs which it hope to meet through the crowdfund.

McDonald commented: “Chase Park Festival relies very heavily on North East music fans to help the event keep going. We have had great support previous years from local companies and partners such as the Percy Hedley Foundation but in order to make sure we can keep bringing the festival back each year we need to consider other ways of funding the event.

“The inspiration of launching a Crowdfunding Campaign came from a number of the performers who played on our second stage, which is designed to give musicians with disabilities a platform to grow and develop their careers.”

If successful, the crowd investment drive will be utilised to expand the festival’s musical line-up even further, along with a revamp of current facilities, which already includes accessible toilets, staging and access ramps.

Speaking about his wider aspirations for the festival, McDonald added: “In the long term, I would like to see the event get bigger and really give disabled musicians a step up.

“My aim is to grow to a stage where the festival is part of a wider organisation that helps remove the barriers to people with disabilities enjoying festivals and becoming professional musicians.”