Statement from The Big Beat
Over the weekend of 9th and 10th of September 2016, The Big Beat were provided the opportunity to advertise our event and place one of our charity collection buckets at the invite-only, Tannyfest music festival in Ballasalla.
Sometime between the hours of 1am and 9am, the Big Beat charity bucket was broken in to and a large portion of the donated cash stolen. We do not know how much cash has been stolen but the bucket was almost full when it was last checked and when the theft was discovered, the bucket was less than half full.
The donations made were intended for Craig’s Heartstrong Foundation, a charity which provides free heart screenings and provides automated electronic defibrillators in many places around the Island. These are designed for one purpose - to save lives.
Whilst this was an invite-only event, the Big Beat team felt that it was safe to leave our collection buckets on site for the duration of the event. Whilst some could consider this naive on our part we have had no issue in the past leaving collection buckets at events. We quite simply believed that, on the Isle of Man, music fans would not stoop to criminality so low as to steal cash from a charity collection bucket for an event run by musicians. We condemn this act in the strongest possible terms and call on all attendees of the Tannyfest event to speak up if they have any information. It seems unlikely that there was a lone person on-site, known to nobody else, who committed this theft.
We would like to state that we do not hold the organisers of the Tannyfest event responsible. They have assisted us at every opportunity since the theft was discovered and have called on their festival attendees to make donations to The Big Beat via our Just Giving page www.justgiving.com/thebigbeatIOM and in light of this, we thank them for their help and the donations which have since generously been made.
The Isle of Man Constabulary have been contacted and investigations are ongoing. We ask that if anyone has any information regarding this despicable act that you contact Crimestoppers anonymously on Freephone 0800 555 111.
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