FREE tickets to a local music festival are being offered to NHS workers in gratitude for the care given to the organisers’ teenage son.
Fifty day passes for ShyneFest in June are available, after 16-year-old Oliver Adcock suddenly fell ill with a heart condition and spent weeks in hospital, including in intensive care.
Oliver’s mum, Shyne, said he has recently been taken off medication after he came home from hospital towards the end of last year.
“He’s been told that he is back to normal now. So we thought to celebrate we’d give away some tickets to say thank you,” Shyne said.
“We are beyond grateful that we did not have to worry about how to pay for the thousands his operations, medication and care would have cost and that we had the reassurance of the professionals taking such good care of him.
“We want NHS staff to come along to ShyneFest for the day, have a load of fun with us and bask in the glory of how amazing you all are,” she said.
The festival will be held on 3 June at Merrist Wood College in Worplesdon with Rhythm of the 90s and Republica the headline acts.
ShyneFest began as a celebration of Shyne’s 40th birthday in 2015. It was organised by Shyne, her husband Kevin and musician friend Ciaron Sykes and held on a farm in West End.
The birthday bash event included 18 bands and performers, food stalls, bouncy castles, camping and an ice cream van, with more than 250 people in attendance.
It then became a commercial event with tickets on sale and camping options and grew popular as a local family-friendly festival.
Festivalgoers this year will be able to attend on Friday 2 June with food and drink stalls and a silent disco and camping available.
A planned line-up of tribute acts that day has been cancelled because of low ticket sales.
Shyne said ticket sales for the live music event on the Saturday have been slow.
“It’s a combination of the cost of living crisis and people not booking things in advance because so many things were cancelled during Covid. They are hanging on to see if they can make it,” she said.
“It’s also a typical festival thing with people waiting to see what the weather’s going to be like.”
Shyne said pay days from the end of March to early April will hopefully encourage more ticket sales and more bookings are expected after the Easter holidays.
Half of the booking fees will go to ShyneFest’s charity of the year, the Halow Project, which supports adults with learning disability and autism.
The Guildford-based charity, which has programmes in Woking, works to give adults with a learning disability more opportunities for independence.
It was created in 2006, by five families who each had a child with learning disabilities and is an acronym of their names, Harriet, Amber, Laura, Oliver and William.
“Saturday 3 June is going to be amazing; we will have the best weekend and we cannot wait,” Shyne said.