Firestarter Festival, the Island’s only festival catering exclusively for teenagers, has changed the location of its Summer 2011 event to Union Mills Football Club. The change comes as a result of the Ardwhallan Outdoor Education Centre becoming unavailable. Ardwhallan, the site that had previously been arranged for the Festival, had been undergoing scheduled building work that was due to be completed in July. However, unforeseen circumstances have since made the site unavailable. This forced a change of venue, but the Festival’s organisers have assured those with tickets or planning to buy them that all of the advertised activities will still be available despite the move. Festival Coordinator Graeme Brooks commented: “It is now apparent that the Ardwhallan site will not be fit for use at the end of August as we had hoped and this unfortunately means that we have had to move on short notice. Thankfully, Union Mills Football Club was available and they were prepared to take us. I’d like to thank both Steve Carter from UMFC and Angelina Leece from Switched On Events, who supply our marquees and event equipment, because they have both been great about helping us out with the last minute change.” Graeme continued: “While we won’t actually be camping at Ardwhallan, we have confirmed with the Department of Education that we can still offer the same adventure activities that we had planned. The football club is close enough to the Outdoors Centre that we will be able to shuttle kids up there for a morning or afternoon of activities during the Festival. In fact, in some ways we can actually offer a better experience now, as we will have the UMFC clubhouse and its excellent facilities in addition to our normal marquee. Plus I imagine we will be able to get a few good football matches going! The Festival experience won’t suffer from the change of venue at all.” In addition to the outdoor adventure activities, Firestarter 2011 is due to feature a 24 hour rock cafe, talent shows and stage entertainment, pugel fighting, super sumo wrestling, giant boxing, sports, mass water fights and a range of bands. Currently the Festival has acoustic solo acts Dave Woodgett and Jon Price signed up, as well as house band PastDoubt, Guildford based Doomed from Day One, Kill the Conversation from Dorchester and local melodic hardcore band Our Final Hour, with a number of other acts still in talks with the Festival organisers. Most of the acts have been arranged via the Upper Room under 18s venue in Douglas. This year’s festival runs from Wednesday 17th August to Sunday 21st August, with over 100 youths expected to be camping there for four nights. Tickets are available to anyone aged 12 to 17 at the time of the festival, and cost ?90 with all camping, meals and entertainment included in the price. Places are still available at the time of writing and further information and application forms can be found at www.firestarterfestival.com Please note that the price of ?95 stated in the press release dated 20/04/2011 was an error and that no tickets have been sold at that price. -END-