AN UPDATE FROM THE BLUEDOT TEAM

Bluedot has made the difficult decision to make 21 – 24 July 2022 our next weekend at our home of Jodrell Bank Observatory. This means that our currently planned 2021 dates will not be taking place.

The challenges of putting an event on at this time led us to ask for your feedback recently, and your suggestions and preferences are a large factor in our decision – you are as much part of bluedot as the artists, speakers and performers. The responses to our survey suggested clearly that compromises in your weekend such as changing the layout or line-up or moving to a new weekend would have been disappointing and unacceptable.

We explored these changes to give us the best possible chance to return. Following your feedback, it became clear that keeping the same festival on the same weekend would have been the only option that meets the expectations we and you and our partners all share for the festival. However, due to a lack of government support around insurance for events such as ours, the risks are too great. Despite continuous calls from our industry over the past six months the Government have refused to step up and provide us with protection via a Government-backed insurance scheme. Without such a scheme, which would have provided us with security, the overwhelming risk and high upfront costs for us to hold bluedot this year are sadly just too high.

As a small independent festival bluedot is left with a simple choice – make unacceptable changes to the weekend & risk the future of the festival or look ahead to 2022 and start the planning now for our greatest event yet.

But do not worry. In the coming months we will be sharing plans as we reimagine bluedot’s return in 2022, exploring the hundreds of reasons you have joined us since we first set foot beneath the telescope in 2016 and curating a series of very special events exploring our universe deeper than ever before. Rest assured this doesn’t mean we are on hold; with the certainty of moving the next edition to 2022 we are able to kick-start the planning now and put more time and passion than ever before into delivering an out of this world event. We’ll be sharing those plans with you in the coming weeks & months as we look forward to our return to Jodrell Bank.

We are already planning some extraordinary collaborations and unique performances that will showcase the bluedot which so many of you have fallen in love with, and we hope you will continue to support this and join us in 2022 by holding on to your tickets. If you would like to request a refund, your ticket outlet will be in touch with details of how to do this shortly.

We’d like to wish other events which will be going ahead our huge positivity in their plans for the coming months, and we of course thank our home of Jodrell Bank and University of Manchester for their support of bluedot, the NHS and key workers whose tireless work brings us closer to normality each day and of course you for your unwavering and continued support through the last year, and into the future.

The bluedot team

FAQS

Will the same headliners appear at bluedot 2022?

We’re working with these artists to hopefully welcome them back in 2022 and we hope they can join us. Standby for updates on our line-up – we recommend signing up to our mailing list to be first to hear news.

When did you make the decision to postpone bluedot to 2022?

We’ve been exploring every avenue to make bluedot happen this summer for the last few months, and it has only become clear in the last few days that we have exhausted all options. Following this, we’ve immediately moved to postpone and share this news with you to keep you updated.

A child in our group will be in a different age bracket on the new dates. Do I need to do anything?

All age-specific tickets (e.g. 11-15 years) will be honoured per the age in July 2021. For example if your child would have been 15 at bluedot 2021, that ticket will still be valid for 2022 even though they will be 16 on the festival weekend.

I have bought a payment plan ticket. How do use my ticket for bluedot 2022?

You do not need to do anything – your ticket provider will be in touch with an update, and any remaining instalments will be taken automatically.

I cannot attend the new dates. How do I request a refund?

Your ticket provider will be in touch shortly with details on how to request a refund. Payment Plan ticketholders will be able to request a refund for the face value of all instalments made so far.

I have a question that isn’t answered above.

Please e-mail our team at hello@discoverthebluedot.com, who will be happy to help.