As it draws to a close, the UK’s festival season is looking far thinner than it was at the outset. In August, the Association of Independent Festivals reported that 60 UK events had either been postponed, cancelled or shut down this year, citing rising costs – and that the total was expected to reach 100 by the end of 2024.

Amid these losses, one community in south-east Cornwall has salvaged their local festival after commercial promoters couldn’t make it work, with residents, landlords and volunteers stepping in to run the show.

And according to Tim Price, who runs the Hannafore Kiosk with wife Gina and hosts a stage, the now-thriving Looe Weekender is “a million times better” than what came before. “Because it’s all controlled by the actual people in Looe. It didn’t do the town any good when it was this large, ticketed event because a lot of local people didn’t bother going – it felt like a foreign place.”

Best known nationwide as the setting for the BBC’s Beyond Paradise, Looe is filled in mid-September for the Weekender, with locals and out-of-towners dressed in bright colours, funky sunglasses and flower garlands, and covered in glitter face paint from Hannafore. “We do it for the love of it,” says Garry Seymour, co-landlord of the Jolly Sailor pub, one of the venues behind the event.

A Looe music festival began in 2011, then known as Making Waves. It featured three main stages; Wizzard’s Roy Wood was on the first bill and tickets started at £35 for the weekend. It was cancelled in 2018, with less than three weeks until the event, when Looe Music Festival Charitable Trust went into administration, £263,000 in debt.

In 2019, it was renamed Looe Live! and Level 42, the Shires and Newton Faulkner performed; a local councillor led a community interest company that ran the event. It aimed to return post-pandemic in 2022, with five stages, including a BBC Introducing stage and acts including Reef and the Lightning Seeds – but once again, it was cancelled three weeks prior to the festival. Tim Vigus, owner of South West Bars and Events, the commercial organisers of Looe Live! in 2022, says it struggled following “the post-Covid increase in production costs, shortage of crew and equipment”.

Rather than let the festival die, a group of publicans stepped in to organise a free three-day event that year. Led by Zoe Seymour, also of the Jolly Sailor, and other local landlords, the community collaborated with a local events organiser and put in their own time and money to fill the gap. While their Looe Weekender festival has no big names, it now attracts between 5,000 and 10,000 punters a day and attendance is free. Each pub programmes their own live music, kicking off on Thursday evening and going until late Sunday.

This is Looe Weekender’s biggest year yet: there are 12 different venues including a quayside stage, and more than 80 acts on the bill. “It’s fantastic, they brought the festival back to life,” says Nick, who has travelled down from Buckinghamshire to attend the festival for a seventh time. “It’s just a really great vibe and you’re not getting ripped off to go to it.”

“We worked really hard to keep this a free event,” says Zoe Seymour. “Every pub comes together and we talk about how we’re going to run it and keep it community-based.”

Walking around Looe, the festival’s community roots are obvious. The Looe Land Train, with a £2 hop-on/off system, ferries punters around and volunteer marshals ensure the safety of audience members and live acts. This year’s local-oriented programme includes a sea shanty group, the Polperro Wreckers; indie rock band Division; local musician and BGT semi-finalist Josh Curnow, also an ambassador for Pentreath Mental Health charity; and music teacher Sharon Ashton, who collaborates with her students.

Peter Friend, who runs the local tourism website, is one of the many locals lending their time for free, creating banners, handling social media and drumming up funding, including £1,500 from the area council. While the lack of big-name headliners may suggest it is running in diminished circumstances, Friend says its current iteration suits the area. Cornwall’s rural location leaves the county subject to sporadic local transport, high fuel costs and low-paid, seasonal work: in November 2022, Citizens UK reported that 13% of all workers in Cornwall are not paid the real living wage.

“The general feeling with big festivals is that ticket prices often block out access for a great number of people due to affordability,” says Friend. “The feedback from the people was that this was a much better format for the town because it’s free to all to attend, it showcases local and regional talent and all of our local hospitality sector gain direct spending.”

No one is making a lot of profit here. The Jolly Sailor just about breaks even – thanks to holding quizzes throughout the year – but for the Hannafore Kiosk it’s a loss leader. With residents, local musicians and organisers all working together, Looe Weekender is instead done with a collective love for the place they live in. “For a town of our size, to have something that’s kept for the community by the community, it’s not a bad ethos,” says Friend.

• This article was amended on 25 September 2024 to clarify that South West Bars and Events ran the proposed 2022 Looe Live! festival, but in 2019 it was organised by a community interest company.