A little update on where we’re at with our Pay It Forward: Share The Love campaign.
Before Shambala 2022, we launched our ‘Pay It Forward: Share The Love’ campaign, to help us open up our events to those who would love to attend, but are quite simply priced out so have never been able to.
Festivals aren’t cheap – especially weekend camping ones. They aren’t cheap to produce and they aren’t cheap to attend. It’s not as simple as offering cut price tickets for folks on low incomes, because saving for a festival ticket will never be a priority when you can’t pay your rent or put food on the table at home. And it’s not just the tickets – there’s the travel, camping equipment, food and drink, it all adds up.
Which is why we started raising a pot of funds to help us share the Shambala love – using the funds you generous souls raised by rounding up the cost of your pints at the bar, making donations when buying your Shambala 2023 tickets, and donations from our Shambala 2022 artist guests. Together, you legends raised over £10,000 towards this campaign, in it’s very first year.
So, in 2023, we’ve gotten the ball rolling!
We’ve identified some fantastic charity organisations in the areas very local to site, who, using the funds raised, will be bringing some of their clients along, to join the party:
THE LEAVING CARE SERVICE
The Leaving Care Service is part of The Children’s Trust. They support Care Experienced Young People, aged 16 – 25 who were children in care, for example in foster care, childrens homes, semi-independent accommodation and so forth.
The Leaving Care Service is used by a lot of talented individuals, such as aspiring actors, singers and theatre technicians, who may not always get the opportunity to see professional musicians or artists, at festivals or gigs – so we’re really pleased to be able to welcome them to Shambala this year.
HARBOROUGH ECOVILLAGE CIC
This fantastic organisation (known locally as The Village) is a non profit CIC, set up 3 years ago to work with and feed the local community, alongside promoting environmental sustainability. Their ‘Community Fridge’ has saved tonnes of food from landfill and their community café works on a pay-it-forward system. Their school outreach programme has reached more than 2,000 local school children.
They’ll be bringing along some of their community members, who are well-known, regular visitors to ‘The Village’ – as well as some young folks from the local youth centre (‘The Cube’).
TICKETS FOR GOOD
And finally, we’ve also been able to donate some tickets to Tickets For Good’s Affordable Ticket Project – a new platform that allows folks who have been in receipt of government support (ie – Universal Credit, Job Seekers Allowance, Employment & Support Allowance, Child Tax Credits etc) to apply for free, or significantly discounted tickets.
LET’S KEEP SHARING THE LOVE!
This initiative isn’t a one off – we want to keep it rolling through future years, so our delightful bar staff will once again be giving you the opportunity to make donations whilst you get your drinks in at the bar – and you’ll also be able to add a donation when booking your tickets to Shambala 2024.
Want to make a donation right now? Simply head to our official ticket page HERE and scroll down to the Pay It Forward section, it’s super quick and easy.
We know that not everybody is able to do this, so there’s absolutely no pressure if you’re feeling the pinch – but if you can spare so much as a few quid, it all adds up.
The Shambala community is amazing. By pulling together, we have the power to make a real difference, break down barriers and share the love. x