73 f
ruder health. But has it? The panel discus- sions and workshops held each year at the AFO Conference offer a chastening note of caution to anyone contemplating running such an event.
If it’s not the perils the weather keep- ing the organisers of any open-air event awake at night, it’s problems with ticket- ing. Or insurance. Or security. Or local authorities. Or noise restrictions or back- stage issues, parking, booking policy, con- tracts, publicity, environmental care, big screens, littering, sponsorship, Brexit, drones, exploding PA systems or anything really. And even those well-established fes- tivals that you assume are untouchable face new challenges every year and must search for innovative ways to keep things fresh and attractive for their customers.
That’s still true of Sidmouth, it’s true of Cambridge and it’s true of WOMAD. You are only as good as your last festival. Get complacent, drop your guard, assume if you build it they will come and it all goes up in flames.
common assumption is that the potential market for any festival has a ceiling, with only a finite number of people who fall into the category of festival-goers. Steve Heap immediately questions this assumption.
T
“Organisers ask themselves, ‘Why does someone go to that festival and not to mine?’ But instead of trying to get audi- ences from other festivals, maybe they should be asking the bloke who doesn’t go to any festivals. Say the number of people who attend a festival over the course of a year is a million… well, there are thirty- one million people who have a job in the UK so what about the other thirty million? Why not target them? You only need to attract one per cent of those people and every folk festival would be rammed.”
How exactly you do that, of course, is the million-dollar question.
“The things that attract people to fes- tivals are a stunning line-up and a wonder- ful experience. Some people will come back and sit on the same blade of grass every single year. Others don’t bother booking until they see who’s on and if you haven’t got Martin Carthy or Frank Turner or whoever, they’ll say ‘we’re not coming’.”
“You’ve got to look at why people come in the first place. At Towersey, maybe thirty-five per cent of the audience would come if we put on the Smurfs because they know it will still be a great event; and you have another thirty-five per cent who will look at the bill and want to see a Celtic band, a top English band, a singer-songwriter and a couple of new artists. But the hardest thing of all is get- ting the final thirty per cent to come. It’s like selling cans of beans in a shop. Some will buy the cans because they like beans. With others you’ve got to add sausage to it. And with others you need to supply a bit of sizzle with the sausage.”
My own early conversion to a lifelong love of folk song was based on seeing Bob
…and onwards to Cambridge in the 21st century… a few changes!
he prime audiences for folk and world music events tend to be thirty-five to seventy-year-olds, mostly middle-class people with a disposable income and the
From Sidmouth 1955 (above)… to Cambridge 1971 (below)…
Photo: Jo Gedrych
Photo: © Judith Burrows
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