MAPS Festival returns – and confusion reigns!
It was only three weeks ago that we posted about Hungry Pigeon, the Northern Quarter-based music festival taking place over the second May Bank Holiday weekend. The event was set up ‘following a hugely successful inaugural event in 2008 under the name MAPS Festival’. But there was a confusing note attached, warning that Hungry Pigeon was the real MAPS Festival successor and any other MAPS Festival wasn’t actually a MAPS Festival at all.
Cue Neil Sowerby’s news story published on CityLife.co.uk yesterday, about the return of MAPS over the first Bank Holiday weekend in May. It, in turn, claims that Hungry Pigeon is a ‘breakaway’ festival and that ‘the Pigeon has landed (well almost) but the MAPS folk say accept no substitute’. MAPS 2009 will also take place throughout the Northern Quarter, including in Centro, Cord, The Roadhouse, Moho Live, Night & Day, The Ruby Lounge, The (newly reopened) Castle, Cup Cafe & Gallery, TV21, Odd, The Bay Horse, Nexus Arts Café, Mint Lounge and the Hilton Laundrette. Yes, a laundrette.
And while Hungry Pigeon is a collaboration between four local promoters, MAPS looks to be a organised by Ben Taylor (formerly of the Roadhouse) and MAPS 2008′s Miz DeShannon, and will be run ‘in association’ with Lost & Found, The Redbricks, Rent-a-Crowd, For Folk’s Sake, Mrs Boon’s Tea Party, The Country Club and The Undergrowth Collective, with confirmed acts so far including Baddies, iLikeTrains The Naughtys, Cheap Cuts, Officer Kicks, Orphan Boy, Delta Maid and Black Velvet Band. What’s more, ‘everyone involved will be well looked after, and our programming and profit plan follows a strict code of conduct’ – which is good to know, isn’t it?
The popularity of last year’s festival (6,000 people) has clearly encouraged everyone involved to (re)organise their own. It’ll be interesting now to see if there’s the demand for two Northern Quarter festivals in one month!
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3 responses to “MAPS Festival returns – and confusion reigns!”
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April 20th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Hurrah for maps! What sort of a person slags off a great event in public anyway!
May 4th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
I went to a couple of the MAPS gigs this year and i was shocked!! apart from Lost & Found which I was told was happening anyway regardless of this so called MAPS….empty venues most of the time and struggled to find out what was on and when…
May 7th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
really rubbish