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community newsNo Wild Fruit tent at Brighton PrideFriday, 21 May 2010 Following a turbulent six months for Pride in Brighton & Hove the organisation has cancelled Wild Fruit's contract to run the licensed bars on the park with less than three months to go until festival day. Aeon Events, the company behind the Wild Fruit tent and parties, was due to start making payments to Pride in March as part of a bar franchise agreement but was advised by its lawyers not to do so until they they had seen evidence that Pride's books were healthy. Aeon also asked for assurance that money fronted for the event would be safe even if the event went the way of last year's Beachdown festival. Aeon was due to hand over a total of £70,000 raising some of that money by subcontracting the bar franchises. According to Aeon, Pride did not respond to either request. Gscene reported the contents of a letter to Wild Fruit's lawyers from Pride chair Robert Clothier last week: "It is with regret that I must inform you that the board of trustees for Pride in Brighton & Hove consider Aeon Events PR Limited to be in breach of their contract terms, and must therefore terminate the contractual agreements previously in place." "The key breach of contract relates to payment terms for the contract fee. The first instalment of the fee (due 1st March 2010) was not received and following a mutually agreed extension to the deadline for payment (to 1st April 2010), still no payment has been received." Aeon Events has been running a dance tent at Brighton Pride since 1995 but the cancellation of the bars contract means that they will not be able to recoup any of the money spent on sponsoring or staging the dance tent. The Wild Fruit tent will therefore be missing from this year's festivities for the first time in fifteen years. In a statement issued on the Wild Fruit website, Paul Kemp said: "…we felt it only fair and transparent that Pride demonstrate to us that sufficient funds are in place to implement some positive health and safety controls…" "It is saddening to think that this really is the end of a great chapter in Pride's history, when local LGBT businesses were key to the event and essential funds were raised for our voluntary groups." Aeon has said that it will continue to run events over the Pride weekend, raising funds for the local voluntary sector. A statement is expected from Pride over the next few days. your commentssaid anonymously Maybe it's time for Pride to become more professional, charge a small £2 entry fee and therefore NOT have problems of insufficient funding?
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Stonewall
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said by Steveneil
on Saturday, 22 May 2010, 6:25pm
It seems that Pride are hell bent on making pride sink without trace. This could be a 'simple' breach of contract, but with 3 months to the event, how will pride get value for money from a new contractor?
Thinking that the in fighting is destroying all the hardwork done over the years
Unless something major happens this year could well be the last pride in B&H.