According to the @bandsboycottbarclays Instagram page, 101 acts are refusing to play the 2024 Great Escape festival held in Brighton over this weekend due to Barclays’ involvement with companies supplying weapons and aid to Israel. In April punk band ‘The Menstrual Cramps’ urged those playing in the festival’s line up to boycott the event over its controversy. The result, has been a large-scale veto of Great Escape, which is taking place from the 15th till the 18th of May, by bands and artists in solidarity with Palestine.
DellaXOZ, a 19 year old singer from Bolton, is just one of the many artists who has withdrawn from the lineup due to the shocking images she has encountered online of the genocide. She told The New Arab that she ‘couldn’t consciously have any contribution towards that by playing three sets at a festival that is funding that very atrocity’. The Great Escape festival, which has been showcasing over 500 up and coming artists every year for 18 years, is sponsored by Barclays bank who, according to the report by Palestine Solidarity Campaign which was posted on the 7th of May, hold over £2 billion in companies who provide arms and military aid to Israel.
Della continued, expressing to the site that ‘these festivals are hiding behind the art and labour of small struggling artists to fund these atrocities instead of outwardly owning their role as the Zionists they’re evidently so proud to be.’ The young artist claimed that she was originally unaware of Barclays’ involvement with the festival and urges companies to be more clear in the future.
One of the festival’s highly anticipated acts, Alfie Templeman, has taken to X to inform fans he will no longer be playing the event. The 21 year old bedroom pop singer expressed that his own values did not coincide with performing, and that he hopes this boycott will ensure that other events ‘think more ethically’ when deciding who they associate themselves with in the future.
I am no longer performing at The Great Escape festival this weekend pic.twitter.com/B2f65wvL6j
— Alfie (@alfietempleman) May 14, 2024
Despite the absence of a large number of musicians, the event is still taking place with some bands choosing to proceed with their performances. Big Special explained on their instagram that pulling from this one event would make it impossible for the Black Country duo to not abstain from performing at any show affiliated with ‘dirty money’. The post went on to say that this would induce their ‘absence from the industry completely’.
Instead the band will donate the fee for their set to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.
As a result of the mass exodus of those set to perform, The Great Escape’s opening show and a keynote speech have been cancelled. You can view the full list of bands and artists that have removed themselves from this weekend’s line up here in the open statement organised by Bands Boycott Barclays. The declaration is urging the festival to drop Barclays as their sponsor and has been endorsed by more than 1,000 additional musicians who were not due to perform at the event.
