A planned music festival met a furious reaction from residents at a public meeting held last night. More than 30 people opposed to the event were in attendance, and several more residents boycotted the meeting in protest, believing that the organisers and the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA) were not seriously interested in consulting them – as tickets are already on sale.
The Waterworks Festival organisers, who hope to hold their electronic dance festival on the 22nd of August on a meadow by the Waterworks Nature Reserve, said in their defence that tickets were being sold subject to the licence being approved, and that all money would be refunded if they were denied access to the land, which one resident called “sacred”.
More than 200 signed representations of protest have so far been made to the council. The organisers have applied to repeat the event in the summers of 2021 and 2022.
“You’re trashing a Site of Special Scientific Interest!” said one resident. Others questioned why they were not consulted before the application was lodged with Waltham Forest Council.
“The reason is that we had not reached a contract stage until very late in the day,” said co-organiser Tom Paine, explaining that a festival needs to be approved as early as possible in the year in order to attract enough attention for August. “We would have preferred to have met with you all before.”
“I know we might not seem like natural allies, but we do share a lot of your interests and values,” he added.
“Bollocks!” replied a resident.
Another resident argued that allowing the festival to go ahead could set a dangerous precedent for the way in which the land is used in the years to come, saying: “I think you’re a Trojan horse. What happens if you do well?”
Memories linger of a ‘Holi Festival of Colours’ held on the same site in 2018, which many believed was a Hindu holiday of religious observance, until it became clear that the event was an open-air party of 8000 people and a vast sound system.
The Waterworks organisers distanced themselves from that event by explaining that they would be using speakers aimed downwards at the ground, and would focus on the quality of the sound rather than amplitude alone.
In one particularly striking speech, another woman said: “You’re basically saying that you will be raping our land, but you’ll be raping it as gently as possible.” She also asked whether the organisers would manually count the number of dead birds the following day.
Responding to the environmental concerns, co-organiser Fred Letts said: “We’re not going to provide parking for the event, we’re going to actively promote sustainable travel. London is obviously great for public transport-”
“Not on Lea Bridge Road it isn’t!” shouted a resident at the back, which heralded a chorus of concern over how the surrounding streets would be kept safe and how 15,000 people would travel to the planned ‘afterparty’ events.
In a surprising admission of ignorance, considering that the festival is planned to take place in just five months time, Paine asked, “This is a genuine question, and I’d like it to be met with a genuine answer: is the traffic as bad at the weekends as on the weekdays?”
“It’s WORSE!” replied several residents in unison. “Do your homework!” shouted another man.
When asked whether there was any realistic chance that the festival won’t go ahead, the organisers confirmed that they would be carrying out an independent survey of the environmental impact before plans would proceed, though most residents remained unconvinced.
“This meadow is a precious wildlife habitat where little owls are currently nesting,” said Celia Coram in a press release from the Save Lea Marshes campaign group. “Red-listed birds and other endangered species are known to frequent the directly adjacent Nature Reserve. Having a very loud music festival here risks harming this fragile habitat for a festival that could easily be held elsewhere.”
One man in the audience made an argument from the opposing side, saying that he wanted the event to go ahead. He said he was “amazed at the efforts they went to” in caring for their host site at a previous event of theirs he had attended.
He was later joined by another man, who identified himself as a friend and former colleague of Letts, saying that the Waterworks site was “under-utilised, you’ve got to admit” and that as a local resident himself, he wanted the neighbourhood to “have a cultural moment, which this area is devoid of – devoid of!”
When pressed on how much the LVRPA hoped to make from the event, they said that they hoped for a net revenue of £27,000, with an additional ‘damage deposit’ of £10,000 if the site is left in a poor state. They explained that the park could use the money for much-needed maintenance.
“Maybe your chief executive could take a pay-cut if you need money,” replied a woman. “He earns £160,000, I just Googled it.” The LVPRA lists the CEO’s salary as within the band of £139,776 – £162,040.
As the meeting drew to a close, the organisers were asked, if the application was approved, how they would feel if residents physically stood in front of the construction work in protest.
“Obviously we’re hoping that won’t happen,” said Paine. “Look, we’ve got a hearing coming up. We think we can mitigate your concerns. The licensing committee will decide if we can mitigate them. If we get the licence, I would suggest we all sit down again and do an independent impact assessment. We’re not going to satisfy everyone, but we’d hope to satisfy some people who would say: ‘You know what? Give it a chance. It might work, it might not.’ You’d be well within your rights to protest if we didn’t engage with you after getting the licence – if we do get it. But we’re not gonna go down that route. So let’s see what happens in the next month and then reconvene.”
In some closing remarks from one resident, she noted how coming to the meeting had galvanised the community: “I think there’s going to be a huge crowd at that hearing. Not everyone wanted to come to this evening’s meeting. But I think it’s important that we came. We’re building on each other’s support. We’re finding out who we are. And we’re finding out that a lot of residents are angry about this.”
This is a great report about the opposition to the proposed music festival at Waterworks in Lammas Road Leyton E10. I was at the meeting – thank you for quoting several of the comments I made. Please note however that most of the people present were from Waltham Forest, not Hackney as in the headline.