Closed bars and cancelled acts: A rundown of the chaos that went down at Love Saves The Day

Love Saves The Day descended into chaos over the weekend as rain put a dampener on what was meant to be a weekend of fun.

Thursday saw bright skies and heard Glue by Bicep for the millionth time, but Friday was a different story. Acts were cancelled, bars were closed and many festival-goers decided to leave early due to the lack of shelter from the biblical downpour.

Outrage on social media about the lack of rain cover prompted the LSTD team to post an apology on their Instagram.

The LSTD team expressed their sadness that people did not enjoy their day and detailed plans to incorporate more shelter for the upcoming years.

Arlo Parks could not perform her set due to the stage flooding.

The LSTD team said the cancellation was “due to the amount of water on stage at the time the set was about to begin. The production team worked as quickly as possible to minimise disruption and the stages reopened as each was ready to go”. 

Third year Bristol student, Dan*, tells The Tab, “I literally didn’t see anyone that I wanted to see”.

The bars on site closed at six due to people swarming the tents in their hunt for shelter from the rain. 

A bar staff employee and Bristol second year neuroscience student, Emma*, said “we had to tell people to leave the bar” and “we had to shut them down because they were tipping over from everyone pushing to be inside”. 

The Love Saves The Day team replied “some of the bars were temporarily closed to allow people to shelter from the rain but reopened when the rain stopped”. 

Mud puddles were used as swimming pools by happy looking attendees and people turned to using bins for some minimal protection from the elements. 

One second year Bristol student told The Tab that the weather was so extreme they were forced to “hide under a picnic table for a bit until we decided to just leave at five thirty”. 

Festival goers reported that people were “running for cover with blue lips”.

The LSTD team seemed not to approve of the Shein festival fits and said “some people did not come prepared for the weather and got wet and cold during the downpour”.

Many students left the festival and reported that the signs stated that re-entry was not permitted. At 9.30pm, LSTD posted that re-entry was possible but by this time festival goers were far from the site.

A spokesperson for LSTD said: “We are really devastated to hear that so many of you didn’t have a good time yesterday and left the festival early.

“Fundamentally it would not be possible to provide cover for 30,000 people… without completely changing the whole identity of the festival.

“Love Saves The Day has been an outdoor open air festival since its beginning 10 years ago… we have always been predominantly outdoors and uncovered…but we are considering bringing more cover into the festival design for next year in case we have more bad weather years.

“After the rain stopped we received a lot of messages from people asking if they could come back in, having left earlier, so, in addition to answering these messages, we put a post up on our social media channels to confirm that people would be allowed to re-enter if still in possession of their tickets.

“We are disheartened to hear reports of some security or staff who were unhelpful or aggressive;  this is totally unacceptable and hopefully it goes without saying that is not what we are about.”

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