Lewes Music Festival. How Project Lewes FC Community Club Continue to Ignore the Community

As I sit in my garden down the road from the Stanley Turner Ground I can hear a large music festival going on featuring the likes of the Beat. Sold Out. A local sports club put it on embracing the Lewes culture, through Bonfire, of getting out enjoying yourself and supporting local organisations. The festival is a fund raiser for two local charities and the sports club.

You’d think it would be the large football club who would have the savvy to put on such a large event, after all the huge staff operation includes the following-

• CEO
• Fans & Community Engagement Coordinator
• Facilities Manager
• Commercial Officer

It is actually Lewes Rugby Club, a infinitely smaller set-up.

Odd isn’t it. Lewes FC I don’t think have put on something like this since Pandemonium when my mate Steve managed to do what none of the above can do and put on a gig in the Dripping Pan featuring Mark Chapman the levellers singer and other local groups. Seemingly my mate can do it while holding down a full-time job but the above cannot.

It was 2013 when the biggest band in the world at the time, Mumford and Sons, played Lewes on their Gentlemen of the Road Tour. It was just two dates at two places they loved. The stage was a stone’s throw from the Lewes FC stadium in the Convent Field. Which is near the station.

Why do Lewes FC not utilise this amazing facility and gift horse, especially as it is a supposed ‘community club’? Why have people in these roles if they are not going to use and challenge their skill sets? For a club neurotic about increasing it’s membership isn’t maybe 5,000 revellers a pretty good group to recruit from as well as make significant funds and goodwill for the club.

It boils down to this awful obsession the club has with becoming a ‘global’ and enormous brand which it fails at and will always fail at as there is not the interest in a niche football club. At the expense of building a proper club at the heart of the community. Three board members have previously admitted to me ruefully the club has ‘lost’ the town.

Wouldn’t an annual music festival be an ideal way to rebuild those links and raise needed funds community engagement?