Southsea Common clean-up under way as festival staff get litter-picking after last night of Victorious

Most of the bottles, cans, and cups littering Southsea Common last night had already been picked up by Monday morning by staff armed with litter pickers and bin bags.

Cleaners said they got to work at 11pm on Sunday, a few minutes after headliner Royal Blood brought the three-day Southsea festival to a close.

Stall holder Nikki Moksha, a watercolour artist, returned to her tent to pack up her wares at around 9am this morning.

She said: ‘The clean-up started last night, so they'd already done most of it by this morning.’

Festival-goers were thanked by the Victorious Festival team in a Facebook post, which also acknowledged some of the challenges faces by guests and stallholders.

On the first day of the festival, more than 20 bars on site had their WiFi connection drop out, meaning staff struggled to process card payments for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Over the weekend and particularly on Saturday, attendees faced long queues to use the toilets, leading to a promise from the festival to carry out a review of the facilities for future events.

The post from Victorious Festival said: ‘This has been been an incredibly hard year for the music and events industry.

‘Last-minute supply chain issues and staff shortages have only made things harder.

‘We know there were some infrastructure issues and we're really sorry that was the case.

‘We thank you for your feedback and appreciate all the messages we have received.

‘We will be reviewing each one in our bid to make Victorious Festival 2022 our best year yet.’

The post also acknowledged the long awaited return to live music at Victorious following the pandemic lockdowns.

It said: ‘We'd like to thank every single festival-goer who came and supported Victorious Festival this weekend. Celebrating with friends and family and seeing live music again after so long has been amazing.

‘We'd like to thank all the staff and crew who worked tirelessly on the event along with the artists, traders, partners, and local community. We appreciate your support so much.

‘Seeing you all enjoying yourselves and experiencing brilliant live music is why we do this. Watching all the singing and dancing at our stages again after thinking it may never happen was incredible!’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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