Draft:Stonedeaf Festival nee Stonedead Festival

Introduction

The Stonedeaf Festival was an independent single day open air rock festival held at Newark Showground, Nottinghamshire. The festival ran for just one year using this name, before changing its name to Stonedead festival due to copyright issues.

History

The Stonedeaf Festival was conceived by Stephen Hughes as homage to the long since defunct Monsters of Rock festivals which had been held at the Donington Park circuit between 1980 and 1996. The first Stonedeaf Festival was created by Stephen Hughes and Bozhana Hughes in 2017 to be held on the Newark Showground site in Nottinghamshire. Stonedeaf was initially a one day one stage event, unofficially expanding to 2 days in 2019 after changing its name to Stonedead.

The format and location was chosen by the creators who then went about putting together a team to run the event. A full team of volunteers was recruited solely from the Facebook group ‘Monster of Rock and Download Veterans’, who came together to share stories about the Monsters of Rock festival and its much bigger replacement, Download festival. Stonedeaf was designed to be a Monsters of Rock for the 21st century and was initially promoted as such.

The company, Stonedeaf Monsters Promotions LTD, was set up by the Hughes’s to be the official backing company to the festival with the event being its sole concern at that time.

The festival was run on a purely voluntary basis whereby nobody would take a salary and all money was to be put back into the event.

With this all in place, the team began the task of building a rock event from scratch with no financial backing. The name Stonedeaf was chosen by the public via a poll of potential names and was inspired by Motorhead.

A date and a line up for the inaugural festival were established. Headliners were Skid Row and also on the bill were Wolfsbane, The Quireboys, The Graham Bonnet Band, Anvil, Massive Wagons, Hand of Dimes, Chrome Molly, and Fallen Mafia, and 25th August 2018 was chosen as the date.

Throughout 2017 and 2018 the team planned and promoted the show relentlessly and momentum slowly increased. The first problem occurred when, trying to register the name ‘Stonedeaf’ with the copyright office, it was discovered that the name was being used by a music shop in Oldham, UK. With both names being involved in the music industry, a clash of interests might have been on the cards. Stephen Hughes contacted the company directly to ask if they had any objections to the festival using the name; they did! With this news, the Stonedeaf team agreed that a name change was needed but the inaugural show would proceed under the original name. By this time, however, other issues within the team were appearing.

Controversy, and the end of Stonedeaf

Initially, Stephen and Bozhana Hughes were the official directors of the company and the festival and, as such, the final decision makers. Other team members were invited to become company directors but refused, citing financial reasons should it turn out to be a failure. Some of the team members did become sleeping shareholders in Stonedeaf Monsters Promotions LTD but still remained volunteers. Please see Certificate of Incorporation for Ltd company, dated 29th June 2017.

As the festival's momentum continued to build and the show date drew closer, some team members felt they should have more say and complained that the directors were taking all the decisions and were marginalising them. In turn, the directors thought that some of the team weren’t putting in the effort, and that those who hadn’t been prepared to take full responsibility when things were difficult, shouldn’t be making demands when things were looking better.

Despite a couple of team members attempting a peacemaker role, the rift between the two parties grew. Inevitably, it was money that provided the straw that broke the camel’s back. One team member accused the directors of siphoning money away from the festival to prop up their ‘failing’ day job business. Although Stephen and Bozhana Hughes did (and still do) have another very successful primary business running an English language school, the two ran completely independent of each other. The accusations were made without evidence and later proved to be entirely groundless.

Nevertheless, the seed had been planted in the minds of the team and demands to see the full financial accounts we becoming almost daily. The company directors attempted to defuse the situation by offering to show all the financial transactions to the volunteers (something they had no legal requirement to do) at the next AGM which was due to be held in September 2018. Until then, they argued, all focus should be on delivering the festival to the growing amount of supporters and ticket holders. Sadly, this was not accepted by the team and the rift became wider.

By this time it was clear that things could not continue as they were and the festival directors were left with a difficult decision to make; they could remove the team and start again, or step away from the festival. With the festival only a few months away, they figured that replacing the team at this stage could seriously jeopardise the event before it had even begun. To simply step away completely would mean that Stephen and Bozhana would give away everything they had worked so hard to assemble. A middle ground was found. The directors proposed to the team that they would step down from all financial and organisational activities and effectively become sleeping partners to the festival. In return, the team would consult Stephen and Bozhana on any major changes to the festival format they had created, and they would always be acknowledged as being the people who created and started the festival. In addition, they would always be welcomed at the festival as guests without input on the day.

This was accepted by both parties and the directors set up a document stating the arrangements between the two. They signed it and sent it over to the team to sign. The team, however, refused to sign until some of the contracts of the festival had been handed over. With growing trepidation by the directors, the band contracts were signed over, the venue contract was signed over and the appointed volunteer team spokesperson and leader was also handed passwords to the website, social media, and email accounts. Within hours, the two directors had been blocked from the social media sites, the passwords for the emails and website access had been changed, and the signing of the agreement had been refused yet again by the volunteers’ team. The team then demanded that the directors hand over control of the LTD Company and the bank account. Suspicious that the team would not fulfil their side of the agreement, the directors refused any further handing over until the agreement had been signed. The directors then received an email from the team stating .........