It is with sadness that today Swindon Mela Limited reluctantly announces that it has had to cancel the 2016 Mela.
The Swindon Mela is a showcase for South Asian art, culture and food and has been a regular annual event since 2002 held in the Town Gardens and promoted by Swindon Mela Limited, a not for profit Company. The event is organised by the Swindon Mela Project Team who are all volunteers, with assistance from their associates and service providers.
Earlier today the decision of the Mela being cancelled was released on Twitter before the organisers were given chance to give their reasons for the cancellation. Below is the full statement from the organisers setting out in full, why the 2016 event will not be going ahead.
‘The main reasons behind this decision has been adverse pressures, costs and regulation imposed on the company at this very late stage by a small section of the local authority.
The Swindon Mela Project Team have been planning the event for over fourteen months, working extremely hard and committing their own resources to stage the 2016 Swindon Mela. The rising costs for street trading licences imposed on individual stallholders and a 25-page application form required by the authority to allow them to attend the event has resulted in a substantial drop out from major contributing stallholders who have supported and enjoyed attending the event throughout its fourteen-year history.
This coupled with additional regulation surrounding the closure of a number of roads in the area surrounding the venue, has resulted in heightened costs to carry out this process. This process was not confirmed as a requirement by the authority until the 1st August giving the volunteers little or no time to secure additional funding or complete the required plans to implement this.
Jasphal Bhui of the Swindon Mela said, “We are very sad for our Team, supporters of the Swindon Mela and Swindon itself but we hope our supporters will appreciate that we as an organisation rely on generous donations on the gates to support the event and with unreachable increased costs the not for profit company and voluntary supporters cannot afford to sustain a shortfall on our budget which now stands at a total of £26,000.
However, Swindon Mela will not give up on our efforts to stage a future Mela in Swindon and pledge to continue to seek out other ways to deliver a successful Mela in 2017 to our supporters and the people of Swindon who have gained so much pleasure and goodwill from our past events.”
