01/11/2025
It's with some sadness I announce we have taken the decision not to run the Blisworth Scarecrow Festival in 2026.
While our time running it was short lived, we have really enjoyed it and would like to thank all the villagers that helped and got behind it.
With vast experience I know that volunteering to run clubs and events is such a rewarding feeling. I do also however know that if you are volunteering you need be aware of the full scale of the job and accept every aspect of it. In this instance having given it five months of thought we have come to the conclusion that we are not prepared to take on the vast scale its very quickly reached. When we first took it on we anticipated more of a Village community level of audience but we have soon ended up with a very wide spread audience and have even heard of visitors coming from as far as Leicester and Peterborough. This quite quickly bought on traffic issues. It's very obvious and easy to point out you need a car park, you need to submit traffic plans to the Police etc but that is crazy levels of work and organisation and not something you can implement in a few minutes. It also costs money. While I dont disagree with with claims that traffic management is needed its simply not what we signed up for. At the point it cant be run with simple street parking (now), is the point where its pushed beyond our wish to be involved.
We have had some lovely offers of help to keep it running which are much appreciated but again with help comes a committee, with a committee comes meetings,planning, organisation, differences of opinion,its not for us unfortunately.
We are certainly willing to be as helpful as we can in handing over the information and page to anyone that wishes to take it on and I am more than happy to continue to sponsor the maps through my business. We would certainly love to see it continue and take part as participants only
