The organisers of the Secret Garden Party, the weekend long festival that takes place an hour’s train north of London, have announced that the event will not continue in its current form after this year. Having previously hosted acts such as Faithless, Gorillaz and Super Furry Animals, organisers said that the last party in 2017 would see SGP “go out with a bang.”
The Secret Garden Party was launched in 2004, and has grown from a 1,000 attendee event to a multi-stage 25,000 plus capacity festival. Taking place in Cambridgeshire, the festival has hosted a variety of acts, with its bills invariably including both popular indie bands and crowd pleasing dance acts. This year, SGP will be headlined by Metronomy, with other eye-catching names on the bill including Crystal Fighters, Kate Nash and Akala.
Whilst festival goers have good reason to be saddened by the discontinuation of The Secret Garden Party, the organisers stress that 2017 will not be the end of the story. In the announcement of the festival’s ending, the “Head Gardener” notes that “this isn’t some principled self-immolation: this is opening it up for new forms in the future … think of it more as “Dylan goes Electric” rather than our Altamonte.”
They also remark enigmatically that “the frontier always moves,” leaving the door well and truly open for the current SGP team to return in a different format.
Whatever the future holds for the Secret Garden Party, revellers will surely look forward to attending the final event in its current format. We’re excited to see how this story develops in the coming months; to see, as the organisers put it, “what phoenix rises from the ashes.”
Tickets to the final Secret Garden Party can be purchased via the festival website.
Tickets from £190 + bf buy online now
See full info at www.secretgardenparty.com
Words by Matt Fredrik
