Fans' drive to pull beloved south Shropshire festival back from the brink

Organisers of Audio Farm, which has been running since 2013 but was staged at Hopton Court in Hopton Wafers for the first time this year, had announced the event would be their last due to debt it had built up.

But after the success of their first Shropshire festival, attended by 1,800 people, they decided to start a crowdfunding campaign to allow it to return.

This year’s event made a loss of £20,000, which needed to be repaid in order to secure a future for the festival.

The crowdfunding target was set at £10,000, with the rest to come from fundraisers.

Donations flooded in but hope began to fade among supporters as the deadline, November 8, came and went without the target being hit.

However the total that was raised – £8,100 – was enough to convince the festival team that there was sufficient backing for the event to make a comeback.

The crowdfunding page has been left open and a series of fundraisers have been planned over the coming months to help pay off this year's debt.

If successful, Audio Farm or its spin-off One Tribe Festival could be resurrected in 2020, after a planned fallow year next year – and Hopton Court has been named as the preferred location.

Attention will then turn to paying off the £38,000 debt carried forward from One Tribe 2017.

A spokesperson said: "Thank you all so much who donated. We have managed to keep the crowd funder open for donations until we hit the £10,000.

"This is rare, but as it had such a good response and we were so close, crowdfunder.co.uk has allowed it, so please keep the donations coming."

Despite losing money, the festival has raised £15,000 for the Green Paw Project – which helps animals in third world countries – in the last three years thanks to donations and profits from one-off events.

From 2022 onwards, it is hoped the main festival will be in profit each year to support the charity.