The Live at the Castle festival, organised by DM Events in conjunction with Experience Enniskillen (Enniskillen BID), and hosted at Enniskillen Castle from March 11 to 20 had everything - a variety of live music acts; from popular local bands to international DJs, a town centre venue with a big top for shelter from the unpredictable Fermanagh weather, well-stocked bars, and a high quality stage set up, with professional lighting and sound production.

Poor numbers

It had everything - except for good numbers of people attending the events. One event in particular, the Key Workers Appreciation Night headlined by Jake Carter, seen especially small numbers attend, despite the fact that tickets for the event were free.

Speaking to The Impartial Reporter, Noelle McAloon, Enniskillen BID manager commented on the low numbers of people attending the festival events.

She said: “From Experience Enniskillen’s point of view, we’re delighted at how it was organised and how it was managed.

“I thought it was really well set up but the numbers definitely weren’t there.”

“We definitely got a lot of feedback from general observers saying that people are not ready to be out yet because of Covid.

“I’m not sure about that. I’d love to know if that was the case. I think there is definitely the question, was the ticket prices too high? I know the organisers are querying that.

“Maybe March is not really festival season, so was the timing wrong?” questioned Noelle, adding: “We in BID asked them [DM Events] to do it in March because it was coming to the end of our five years but from BID’s point of view, I’m delighted with how it was set up and how it was managed. The health and safety of everyone that came was paramount. I think people that were there enjoyed themselves but absolutely the numbers were not there.”

Key workers

Referring to the special Key Workers Appreciation Night on Friday, March 18, Noelle said: “What happened on Friday night, I will never know because it was a free concert.

“I think there was an element of people going, ‘oh I wasn’t a key worker’. Did people feel that if you weren’t in the heart of a Covid ward saving lives, that it wasn’t for you?

“But to have someone of the calibre of Jake Carter playing to a empty big top and then he went to Sligo the next night and had a full carpark of people. Is Enniskillen not the place for live music? I’d love to ask that question because I was told by many many people that, ‘this is brilliant’, ‘we need live music’ and ‘this is exactly what Enniskillen needs’, but we didn’t have the ticket sales.

“And although there was a number of nights that were really well supported, every night could have held another couple of hundred people,” Noelle told this newspaper.

Summer events?

This newspaper understands that prior to the Live at the Castle festival taking place in March, DM Events were planning to bring more events to Enniskillen this summer. However, will this still be the case following the small attendance at some of the March events?

“The guys are brilliant, I couldn’t say enough about DM Events, they were outstanding. Any problem that they encountered, they dealt with it. [But] the event was not profitable so as business people, that’s not sustainable.

“Depending on funding they would love to come back to Enniskillen, and that would be external funding because as a business venture it was absolutely not profitable,” said Noelle, adding: “I’d love to see them back but I couldn’t stand up and say, ‘come back and it will be better’, because I just don’t know.”

Acknowledging comments from some people who have said that the Live at the Castle events were not well advertised, Noelle said: “We ran a social media campaign and it was one of our most successful social media campaigns in terms of click-throughs, in terms of engagement, we did paid ads in all the Border counties so I find it interesting as well that some people have said, ‘look I didn’t know about it’.

“We did ads, it was featured in local newspapers, some of the national newspapers, it was on the radio,” she said, adding: “Whether we can just put it down to people being nervous about Covid, we have a war in Ukraine which makes people nervous, we have rising costs so whether people can look and say, ‘I’m going to spend between £22 and £27 on a ticket’, maybe people thought, ‘that’s not what I’m going to do’.”

However, it is still hard to understand how Friday night’s free event had such a poor attendance, with one attendee estimating that there was around 50 people there.

“I think there was nearly 300 free tickets registered for, like imagine going to the bother of registering,” said Noelle, adding: “People who had registered for a free ticket, didn’t come.”