Kidwelly’s Gwên Gwen festival cancelled hours before it was due to start

In a statement on social media, organisers blamed the weather for the last minute cancellation and said it was processing refunds.

The event cancellation announcement followed a series of statements by headline artists pulling out of the festival citing lack of communication and non-payment.

Writing on Instagram, Example said: “Dear people of Kidwelly. This Sunday I was meant to be – and very much look forward to headlining Gwen Gwen festival in your lovely town.

“It is with great regret that my team and I have had to make the difficult decision to pull out of this event.

“The promoter for this event has breached a number of points in the contract.

“We have had zero communication regarding the stage, technical and backstage setup. Something we cannot just turn up to unprepared and essentially would be going into the show blind.

“Of greater concern is the facet the promoter hasn’t paid us our full fee. This rarely happens in my experience but for obvious reasons it now makes it impossible for us to honour this agreement and perform.”

Fellow headliners, Gentlemens Dub Club, who also played the festival last year, raised similar issues of non-payment and communication problems as they also pulled out of the event.

In a statement posted to facebook, a spokesperson for the band said: “It is with great regret that we are going to have [to] pull out of our performance at Gwen Gwen in Kidwelly tomorrow.

“The event organiser has breached a number of points on the contract. We’ve been trying to resolve this with them for over 2 months now. We have on multiple occasions been promised payment and tech specs both of which have yet to materialise. Pulling out of [the] show is not something we take lightly but it’s impossible to make this show work.

“We thoroughly enjoyed the event last year and are gutted to not be able to play this year.”

A spokesperson for the festival said: “We are truly devastated to announce that Gwên Gwen Festival 2023 has been cancelled.

“The team have worked tirelessly over the past 9 months, especially this week under extremely challenging circumstances with weather making the site build difficult and as a result of these challenges and the associated added extra costs, we have made the very difficult decision to cancel the event.

“This is not a decision we have taken lightly and sincerely apologise for the disappointment this will cause.

“We want to thank all the ticket holders, volunteers, artists, traders, contractors, security and everyone who has helped under extremely difficult circumstances and gone above and beyond to make this work.

“All refunds are currently being processed and an email will be sent to all ticket holders, these will all be processed with immediate effect, please allow 5-7 working days for the money return to your account.

“Again, we apologise for this disappointment, we will release a further statement on Monday.”