Edhat Staff
The Lucidity Festival, an annual event known for its blend of music and art, has announced the end of its operations after over a decade of community, celebration, and growth. The festival team released a heartfelt letter to their community last week, addressing the closure.
The festival described itself as an open-source transformational arts and music festival. The three-day event featured workshops, live music, camping, art and dance programs, and more with an emphasis on environmental and social responsibility. The festival has taken place annually since 2012 at the Live Oak Campground off Highway 154.
Despite trying to overcome financial hardships following the COVID-19 pandemic and weather challenges, the event met an immovable obstacle with last-minute requirements by the County of Santa Barbara citing fire safety and access concerns during the peak fire season.
Due to these new county stipulations, along with a dramatic reduction in the allowed capacity at their traditional Live Oak Campground venue, the festival’s planned June 2024 event faced a forced postponement.
Organizers set a new date for the Lucidity Festival from April 25-27, 2025 at Lake San Antonio North Shore in Monterey County.
However, the festival will now be shutting down for good citing financial constraints that make proceeding impossible, leaving the festival unable to recuperate or refund ticket holders.
“Unfortunately, the challenges we have faced in recent years have proven insurmountable. The 2020-2021 COVID-19 shutdown marked the beginning of our financial struggles, but we persevered. The severe weather of 2023 tested our resilience, but we continued forward. However, this year, just weeks before our 2024 event, unforeseen last-minute changes in requirements by the County, made it impossible for us to proceed, leading to a postponement that we can not financially recover from.
We understand the trust you placed in us when you purchased your tickets, and it deeply saddens us to inform you that we are unable to provide refunds,” organizers stated.
The Lucidity crew expressed apologetic sentiments, underscoring their exhaustive efforts to secure funding and navigate bureaucratic challenges.
“We deeply regret that we cannot offer you the resolution you deserve, and we are truly sorry for the disappointment and frustration this causes. Please know that this decision was not made lightly and we have exhausted every possible option to avoid this outcome. We sought government grants, loans, emergency funding, lines of credit, support from investors, and donations from our friends, family, and community. We did everything within our power to keep this dream alive,” organizers stated.
Although the official festival operations will cease, the Lucidity team holds onto hope for a miracle to save the event. They call on anyone who believes they possess a potential solution to reach out immediately, before they proceed with closing down the business for good.
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The debate over whether this is a legitimate organization or not is silly. This was a locally run operation by volunteers for 20 years. It was legitimate. Unfortunately the nationwide festival circuit that used to be homegrown and independent has been co-opted by corporations and investors that has essentially squeezed out the little guys. Lucidity is no different. I do agree the organizers should refund tickets or make some kind of reimbursement amendment. If they have zero dollars left, they should show an accounting and be transparent as to why that happened and include options for them to recoup their money via banks and credit cards.
How much were tickets?
Last year they started at $122
I think it went up to as much as $250 per person for a 3 day pass
Whoooeee! I’d be a little miffed if I was told my money was spent already and they couldn’t refund it. Ouch.
I recommend people file a fraud/ REG E claim if paid with card. Very likely you’ll get your money back, you would just state that you did give your info and that you were not provided service. If you have a bank like Wells Fargo, Chase, BofA, Citi you will most likely have your money back in a few days at most. Don’t let them get away with this, they should have liability insurance for this type of stuff… Deposits are typically non-refundable unless it was the fault of the vendor/merchant… Been in banking over 10 years, both in lending and back office operations, dealt with these claims for at least 10 years…
2 tickets and a car camping pass = $1,170 at the cheapest early bird tier.
KKASTNER0 – that’s a ton! Was Phish AND Dead & Co playing or something? LOL!
Another legal rip-off of prepaid ticket money for a cancelled event. There should be a law that prepaid event ticket money must be paid to a 3rd party trustee and held in a trust account until the event happens.
The prepaid ticket money went towards the next event and couldn’t have happened without it. They’ve lost thousands in deposits etc. I know, I’m a part of the Lucidity family
They can’t have it in a trust as it is needed to run the business. It is held partially by the ticket company but only enough for immediate refunds, not the entire lot. Be real about what it takes to run an actual business.
You mean it takes a Ponzi scheme to run a business? Amazing and Trumpian!
There is a big difference between failure and fraud.
File a fraud/ REG E claim if paid with card. Very likely you’ll get your money back, you would just state that you did give your info and that you were not provided service. If you have a bank like Wells Fargo, Chase, BofA, Citi you will most likely have your money back in a few days at most. Don’t let them get away with this, they should have liability insurance for this type of stuff… Deposits are typically non-refundable unless it was the fault of the vendor/merchant…
It will be interesting to learn the date did Lucidity “organizers” (knew) they would be canceling this event and how much money was received before and after the cancellation.
“organizers” – these are people who worked close to full-time at less than optimal wages aka less than minimum for years on this event. They put their hearts and souls into it but the county’s last minute changes, the increased event cost etc. put them out of business.
File a fraud/ REG E claim if paid with card. Very likely you’ll get your money back, you would just state that you did give your info and that you were not provided service. If you have a bank like Wells Fargo, Chase, BofA, Citi you will most likely have your money back in a few days at most. Don’t let them get away with this, they should have liability insurance for this type of stuff… Deposits are typically non-refundable unless it was the fault of the vendor/merchant…
File a fraud/ REG E claim if paid with card. Very likely you’ll get your money back, you would just state that you did give your info and that you were not provided service. If you have a bank like Wells Fargo, Chase, BofA, Citi you will most likely have your money back in a few days at most. Don’t let them get away with this, they should have liability insurance for this type of stuff… Deposits are typically non-refundable unless it was the fault of the vendor/merchant…
IT’S NOT FRAUD! They have legitimately been doing business for 12 years, have put on fabulous events and just recently ran into problems. The sheriffs loved them but County Fire didn’t… They have the right to suspend tickets based on situations beyond their control – act of God etc. In this situation, they can’t go on.
They may be offering like kind access to other events so that people won’t lose their $$
That’s why I said, “fraud/ REG E.” It is a right of consumer banking clients.
I run a business as well and regularly take deposits because a lot of my work can costs thousands of dollars and there is significant overhead/ materials costs. My deposits are non-refundable unless the work/job is impacted from something not caused by the client… For example, robbery, fire, damage caused by me or factors not caused by customer’s negligence. I’ve had an instance where i was injured, i had collected a deposit of $1000.00 from my client, I explained to the customer what happened and they allowed me to push back the expected delivery date. However, i had to keep pushing it back and ultimately the customer wanted their item back, I had already begun work and had spent money on payroll and material. Still the right thing to do was to refund the client their deposit in full as I did not meet my end of the deal. As a business owner you always need to have reserves for unexpected circumstances…
I am a business owner too and understand taking retainers/down payments. This was not that – their true intent was to continue on in a different place. However, rising costs (labor, materials, musical entertainment etc.) has created a situation that is next to impossible to recover from. Will the ticket holders get some relief – YES by way of transferring their ticket to another event.
All of you folks who immediately jump to the conclusion that this was a fly by night organization or that they are Fyre Fest are completely off-base. This was run by a cooperative membership of 15-20 folks with over a million dollar annual budget. It was run as professionally as any business if not more so and I’m a bookkeeper.
Sure… if you say so… any promoters, radio people that put events together from advertising, alcohol sales, tickets, to contracting talent that run into the 100s of thousands put up the money first and then they get paid last IF their is any profit. A lot of times there isn’t… Additionally people paid originally for a certain date and location, sound like they said they’d move it elsewhere and now they haven’t… The only right thing to do is to refund people in full if that is what they want. If it’s a business that means, owners, stake holders, associates or partners need to put up their personal money to make things right, if they’ve been around that long and we’re a “well run business,” they’d have lines of credit for this type of thing, also you’d think for how exorbitant the prices are because they are, they’d have some money put aside for this type of thing. I am pretty sure though tgat as soon as the events were done each year the organizers woyld go and give themselves huge draws from the profits instead of being .pre conservative amd putting money aside… again it’s been 12 years any well run business would have plenty in Reserves amd be diversified enough to weather any situation.
Achebe171 – wow there’s so much you don’t know and don’t care to know. They (the organizers) did NOT take “big draws” at the end of the event. You don’t even understand what they stand for…transparency in all things including what has happened to the money. They have money but want to do the right thing with it and give it back to the investors and others.
You don’t understand events such as this…