Zero hours and 96 million

At midnight, a few hours before the opening, the festival "Wild Mint", one of the largest musical festivals of the country

Do not rush to say: "Well, what do you do, an extreme situation." The point is not the very fact of the cancellation, but how exactly this happened. What - you can understand. How - behind the facet of ethics and common sense.

Yes, mass events should not be held in a pandemic (if this is not a championship, not an economic forum and not a concert on Russia Day), but then why coordinate them? And the day before the cancellation. In Europe and the USA, all large festivals are canceled in the spring, winter, or even much earlier. It hurts, sadly, but at least it is clear: no one makes plans, does not spend money, there is logic in this. Plus, the huge compensation that the state pays to promoters and artists to Lokdown. All this gives the feeling that the concert industry and society act at the same time, they have a common goal, they help each other.

But how it happens with us.

“The day before the festival,” says Andrei Klyukin, general producer of Mint, “we went through all the procedures again and received official good, even there was a press conference. And yesterday we were called to the government of the Tula region. It was an emergency meeting, it took place at night. All representatives of the region were at zero hours in the government. We were told that, unfortunately, it should be accepted for granted - the festival will not take place. ”

Two words about what this festival is and in what format it was planned this year. To begin with, this is a private, independent story, behind it does not have a state or financial giants, such as Sberic and OKKO. That is why 18 million lost due to last year’s cancellation, and 96, invested this year, are huge, crushing losses.

Manizha, “Cinema”, The Hatters, Garik Sukachev, Auktsyon, Ivan Dorn, Aigel and dozens of other artists were to perform in 2021. 12.5 thousand tickets were sold (with the capacity of the festival field 100 thousand, that is, much lower even 25 percent filling).

But the money in question was spent not only on advertising and artists. Klyukin's main concern was different - to ensure the safety of people.

We corresponded with him in the process of preparing the festival. And over and over again, I found out that "wild mint":

1. I agreed with Invitro and provided a discount on the PCR for visitors to the festival in all (!!!) cities of the country (Klyukin was one of the first in the musical industry and actively called for vaccinating all others);

2. Organized a network of exit laboratories;

3. I instructed in social networks of the audience for security.

Sanitizers, markings - of course.

This is generally a socially oriented story. Klyukin and his team made sure that in all the cafe at the festival there was a social package. That is, people could eat for 300-350 rubles. Klyukin wrote to me to the messenger: “Day and night we make roads for the disabled. We try to catch very much. The total price of paths for disabled people is 15 million. ” He does not spare money for such things.

And all this overnight became unnecessary. Now the field with fully built scenes, summed up communications and paths for 15 million is empty.

The sun bakes, the wind blows. But there is no music and there are no spectators either. And now it is not known whether there will be something next.

The first question that arises: "For what?" Why were they so punished? There were definitely no political reasons. They were at others, at Pokrovsky, at Noise, at Aloever, “porn films”, but there were not even a shadow of claims to “mint” for these reasons. Moreover, all these months they worked in tight and fruitful contact with Rospotrebnadzor, with the regional administration and other instances. And it seemed that everything was fine, there is understanding.

But he was not, of course. It was not because they were independent. Klyukin and other independent promoters do not have a roof in the authorities, for them there is no one to intervene at the level at which such decisions are made. They spit on them simply because it was possible to give a damn, and not at all because of the pandemic. The cancellation a few hours before the festival is translated: we have no care of you.

Hence the feeling that we are fighting the virus not together, but separately. Officials who need to report to the higher authorities and cancel something unimportant from their point of view, separately. They have some kind of pandemic. And people are separate. And the forces are clearly unequal.