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BLOC UPDATE

BLOC UPDATE July 9, 2012Culture0 Comments

It was set to be one of the best electronic music festivals of 2012 with a line up boasting Ritchie Hawtin, Amon Tobin and the legendary Snoop Dogg.

Here at TLG magazine we were more than excited about the event, but by the time we arrived at 8pm on Friday 6th of July it was clear the problems were only just beginning. I gained entry to the festival within 30 minutes due to my press pass, my sister however who had a standard ticket had to queue for over 2 hours. There were rumours that the barcode system had broken down and our tickets weren’t scanned.

That aside, the site looked incredible- all credit goes to the designers. By 10pm we headed to the reasonably priced bar (£6 for a double which is the best price I’ve found at a festival). After being refused entry to the MS Stubnitz- due to overcrowding we headed to the main arena. After a bit more queuing we entered and eagerly awaited the arrival of Snoop Dogg. After about 30 minutes wait something told me it just wasn’t going to happen. It was now 4 hours since I’d arrived at the site and I was yet to see any live music. Shortly afterwards we were evacuated off site.

There is a lot of speculation as to what lead to the closure of Bloc. The organisers have issued this statement

We are currently gathering information about Friday night’s events.

We are also working to ensure that everyone will be refunded for their tickets.

Please bear with us while we do this.

Thanks to all of you, as well as the many artists and crew who travelled across the world to come to Bloc – we are so sorry that we couldn’t deliver the experience we had planned.

And thanks so much to the event control, security, stewards, police and public who worked together to ensure that no one came to harm during the peaceful evacuation.

This is far and away the most important result of the night.

For those of you who are frustrated and angry – we hear you. For those sending love and support – thank you.

More news soon.

The Bloc team x

And this message comes from the unfortunately named Crowdsurge who were in charge of the ticketing

By now everyone will have heard that Bloc 2012 was closed due to crowd safety concerns.

We are all absolutely devastated that this happened, but the safety of everyone on site

was paramount.

Given the situation on the ground, we feel that it was the right decision to end the show early.

Bloc will not open on Saturday 7th July so please don’t come to the site.

Stand by for full information on refunds.   Please check the Bloc website (www.blocweekend.com) for updates.

As soon as we have more information we will email all impacted customers again.

Regards,

The CrowdSurge Team

Bloc have issued a new statement reiterating their apology ‘we’re deeply sorry for all of the frustration and disappointment caused’ and have just launched an investigation into friday and want to hear your feedback you can contact them via bloc2012@baselogic.net.

We await further news. Naturally here is a lot of anger directed towards the organisers and mistakes were clearly made. However I do sympathise with the Bloc team and I hope this doesn’t spell the end of what for the past 5 years has been a great festival.

Text: Lucy Molloy

Tags: Bloc Cancelled, Bloc Festival, Closed Down, Snoop Dogg