Organiser ‘gutted’ after Boscombe Big Glow Show cancelled

The Big Glow Show, an alternative light show for fireworks night in Boscombe, was cancelled just days before it was due to go ahead.

The light show was planned to take place in Shelley Park and anticipated to be the first event of its kind.

Stir Events was the company behind setting up the light show.

As a ‘not-for-profit’ event organiser, the managing director Mandy Polkey said: “We try and deliver events that the community wants and needs.”

With BCP Council having rulings against fly posting, the event immediately faced challenges with marketing and promoting a new event to the public.

Stir Events were hard at work to try and make this exactly what the community would want. 

Mrs Polkey said: “We decided to curate a brand-new style event to hopefully suit the local community.”

The reality of financing a brand-new event from the ground up became apparent for the company.

Mrs Polkey said: “This particular event had a profile of about £7000, which in the run of things is not a huge amount.”

She added: “For a not-for-profit company, it’s still quite a risk.”

With the event only selling a fraction of the tickets, Stir Events “weren’t even going to cover the costs of security, let alone the rest of the event”.

The predicted weather for the weekend was torrential rain. However, it was not as severe as predicted.

“If it wasn’t going to be raining, could we then be brave and then hopefully we get lots of sales on the night.”

She added: “The weather changed. I’m gutted.”

Nevertheless, Mrs Polkey was optimistic about the future of the event. “We’ve got a brand which we really love. And we think it’s got legs.”

She added: “We planned it beautifully. We just need to get the message out to a lot more people.”

Stir Events will deliver the Christchurch Christmas Lights event on November 28th, which will involve similar lighting to what was expected for the Boscombe event.

They believe that the brand of The Big Glow Show will allow for more opportunities to host and organise events like this in the future, with the Christchurch Christmas light turn-on event being the beginning of that brand growth.