By Lola Bailey
A new festival is on its way this August. Jaysonville festival has been organised in tribute for a friend who passed away in 2023.
One in ten people lose someone to suicide. In England in 2023, the rate for people aged 25 to 29 was 17 per 100,000 males and for people aged 30 to 34 it was 20.
“I run a security company and in December 2023, I had a guard kill himself because of mental health issues,” says Jon Clowes.
“The aim of it [the festival] is to bring a piece of America to the UK. But it is also in support of men’s mental health and we are teaming up with a charity called Andy’s Man Club,” he adds.
Andy’s Man Club is a men’s suicide prevention charity created in 2016 by nine men who met in a small room in the Yorkshire town of Halifax. Since then they have expanded and now run events all across the country and also have an online presence.
“We saw an opportunity here to try and do something good for men that nobody really speaks about,” says Alex Lewis. Jon replied, “Absolutely.”
Jon, 27, and Alex, 36, are both in the security industry. They have worked in security for Glastonbudget, F1, and many festivals. They have both known men who have taken their own lives and wanted to collaborate with a charity for this event.
The festival was named after Jon’s friend, Jay, as he had wanted to create a country festival or get a venue to host a country event.
“We haven’t got time to actually do a full venue, so we thought we would do a festival. And when we were thinking of the name, we thought ‘let’s call it Jaysonville.’ It’s got his name and it’s quite American as well,” Jon explains.
The festival will be held in Hinckley on Saturday, August 30, from 1pm until midnight. The acts will include 26-year-old Derbyshire musician Charlotte Bettson, a Miley Cyrus tribute, a Rag-n-Bone Man tribute act, covers band Country Bound Midlands, and the headliner, a Teddy Swims tribute act. At the end of the night there will be a DJ playing country music.
“We’re helping out with a festival called Leicesterbury and we’re also doing the security for it. And with one of the organisers of that festival, under his temporary event licence, he gets to hold five a year and we asked the owner of the field and the other organiser of Leicesterbury if we could do ours at his place,” Jon says.
Jon and Alex started organising the event in January. Two weeks after picking the date, they had their line-up. “We’re at the stage now where we just need to finalise everything,” says Alex.
“Our max number is 499. However, for the first one, we hope to get around 200 to 250. It doesn’t sound like a big number, but it is for the first ever festival on our own back,” he continues.
“With our security background, we do a lot of events, from big events to small events. And with doing that, we get to see what works and what doesn’t. So Alex and I came up with the idea and we are making it happen for Jay,” Jon adds.
Although they do not have the experience of hosting a festival they believe they have “an advantage” compared to others as they have the security experience.
Planning an event like this is not cheap, especially for the first time. Jon and Alex say they have put in £11,000 each into the festival.
“We actually go out to work and this is our wages that we put into this. This hasn’t been given to us or anything like that. This is hard-earned money going back into this,” Alex explains.
Jon adds: “We want to make the money back that we put into it so we can make it run again next year and then year by year we make it better. But we’re not looking to make tons of money off it.”
Alex continues: “You can’t hope but not dream of it being as big as the rest of them. But you can only get what you put in. So we’re putting in the hard work now and what it will be after this year is what it will be. It’ll probably be in the same location for a long time. But if it does grow and does get bigger, it would be lovely to have a big name out there that everybody knows about.”
They do dream of Jaysonville festival getting big enough to have a couple of locations throughout the UK.
As a last thought, Jon says: “We are out there to just try and do some good for men’s mental health and just put on a real fun day for everybody. Everybody is welcome there, families with children or disabled people. Everybody’s welcome to our festival.”
