Abbey Aid was an open-air pop concert held at the

Abbey Stadium The Abbey Stadium, currently known as the Cledara Abbey Stadium for sponsorship reasons, is a football stadium in Cambridge, England. It has been the home ground of Cambridge United since 1932, and currently has a maximum capacity of 7,937 spe ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

in May 2006. It was the first of its kind in

, targeting pop fans as opposed to the more established

Cambridge Folk Festival The Cambridge Folk Festival is an annual music festival, established in 1965, held in the grounds of Cherry Hinton Hall in Cherry Hinton, one of the villages subsumed by the city of Cambridge, England. The festival is known for its eclectic mix ...

which targets a substantially different audience. It was a huge flop.

History

As the name suggests, Abbey Aid was originally designed as a

fundraising Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...

project to help see

Cambridge United F.C. Cambridge United Football Club is a professional association football club based in the city of Cambridge, England. They currently compete in EFL League Two, the fourth tier of the English football league system. Nicknamed the U’s, the club h ...

through a tough economic situation that had existed for many years, but came to a head in the summer of 2005, when debts escalated to an unmanageable level forcing the Club into

administration Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal: the process of dealing with or controlling things or people. ** Administrative assistant, traditionally known as a se ...

. To help the club through what looked like being a long summer (as source of income virtually dry up during this non-playing time for most

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

clubs), the club started to arrange a concert to be held at its stadium over the first weekend in July 2005. The original nature of this concert was that it would be three sessions long, starting on the Friday night with a 'Party on the Pitch' followed by a series of local bands performing on the Saturday afternoon and culminating in a pop concert on Saturday evening. Due to the club's precarious financial state preparations for the concert progressed at an extraordinarily fast rate considering the total lack of experience of the organisers in this field; logistics were arranged, local acts booked and a headline act found in the shape of pop artist

Natasha Bedingfield Natasha Anne Bedingfield (born 26 November 1981) is a British and New Zealand singer, songwriter and record producer. She released her debut album, '' Unwritten'', in 2004, which contained primarily up-tempo pop songs and was influenced by R& ...

. However, just when the concerts seemed to be heading in the right direction, the unlikely stumbling block of world

poverty Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse Biophysical environmen ...

halted progress. With the G8 summit at Gleneagles scheduled for the week following the concerts, the nation's media had focussed on the growing campaign to focus these talks on ending world poverty, and taking this lead Bob Geldof et al. had organised a series of concerts around the world under the banner of

Live 8 Live 8 was a string of benefit concerts that took place on 2 July 2005, in the G8 states and South Africa. They were timed to precede the G8 conference and summit held at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland, from 6–8 July 2005 ...

for the same weekend as Abbey Aid. Despite initially claiming that the concerts would carry on regardless, after poor ticket sales the event was eventually cancelled/postponed citing support for the Live 8 concerts as part reasoning. Abbey Aid was rescheduled and took place from 26 to 27 May (under the banner 'Party on the Pitch'), with the following acts playing: * Kings of Queen * Chico *

Journey South Journey South are an English singing duo, consisting of brothers Andy and Carl Pemberton. They are from Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire. Initially the brothers lead a five piece rock band 'The Answer' featuring musicians from the North East of E ...

Lee Ryan Lee Ryan (born 17 June 1983) is an English singer, songwriter, and voice actor. He is best known as the lead singer of the boy band Blue. Early life Lee Ryan was born in Chatham, Kent. His parents split up when he was six years old. Ryan most ...

Liberty X Liberty X (originally called Liberty) are a British girl group consisting of Michelle Heaton, Jessica Taylor and Kelli Young. The group's best-known line-up also included Tony Lundon and Kevin Simm. The group was formed by the five finalists of ...

The concert had a capacity of 7,000 despite the stadium's larger capacity, as all tickets were to stand on the pitch. None of the stands at the ground were in operation due to the club's failure to gain a safety certificate for the concert due to the way they were constructed for football matches rather than pop concerts. In the end this was a moot point as only around 1,000 paying spectators attended each concert, well short of the organisers' expectations, and the event ended up losing money.

References

{{Reflist Music festivals in Cambridgeshire Music in Cambridge History of Cambridge 2006 in England 2006 in music Music festivals established in 2006 Festivals in Cambridge