04/08/2026
Next weekend’s Beer Festival has been cancelled. Not because I didn’t want to do it, but because I couldn’t justify the financial risk. It would have cost around £5,000 to put on. Thanks to Emneth Premier and another local business, we’d secured around £250 in sponsorship, but that still left a huge amount to find.
It’s not the first time either. I had a New Year’s Eve event planned, but two weeks before it was due to happen not a single ticket had been sold.
The thing I struggle to understand is that people often ask why nothing happens in villages anymore, why pubs are closing or why community events disappear.
The answer isn’t always rising costs or the economy. Sometimes it’s simply a lack of support.
You don’t have to drink alcohol to support a pub - have a Coke, a coffee or a meal. If weekends don’t work for you, come in during the week. If the pub isn’t your thing, support the events at the village hall, the charities, the clubs or another local business instead.
A community only stays alive if the people living in it make the effort to keep it alive.
There are around 2,500 people in Emneth. The pub can legally hold around 80 people, yet on most evenings we don’t even see 20 customers. That’s not because there aren’t enough people - it’s because too many people assume someone else will keep these places going.
I’m not blaming any one person. No single person is responsible. But when hundreds of people each make the decision not to support something local, the result is exactly the same.
Then, when the pub closes, the events stop and the village loses another part of its community, everyone asks, “What happened?”
The answer is that these things don’t disappear overnight. They disappear a little bit at a time.
If you want a village with a pub, events and a real community spirit, they have to be supported before they’re gone - not after.
Use it, or lose it
