News for Festivals, Festivals for News

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International Outdoor Event Expo (IOEX) is thelaunch event dedicated to live event production and technology. IOEX will bring together organisers of live events from festivals, corporate and sports to experiential, promotional and music.

Regulated Entertainment is Under Consultation Agai

Broadstairs Balances Out

Purple Guide

The Health and Safety Executives Events and Safety Guide known to us all as the Purple Guide has been under review for some time now with a whole range of different panels making contribution and HSE doing the final work.  The paper is now ready for consultation

Another one bites the dust – Radio prog that is

Genevieve Tudor’s Shropshire Folk programme is about to get the chop, following hot on the heels of Mick Peat’s wonderful show covering the east of England, Genevieve works out of the Shropshire area and has just been told that she is part of a twenty percent cut.

Vote for Tenterden Folk Festival NOW

Tenterden Folk Festival has a chance to win up to £6,000 if we can generate sufficient votes on Nat/West Community Force, the charitable arm of Nat West Bank. 

To vote for us go to http://communityforce.natwest.com/project/337 and click on the red “Vote for” button in the top right hand corner.

As additional funding becomes harder to get and 2012 being the 20th Tenterden Folk Festival this would come in very useful to help stage a special event or book an extra special guest for October 2012.

Using Newspaper Words in Yours

If when you are writing your press release for our festival, you use the same words as the local or national paper, either from their headline or from the text, you could be infringing their copyright. 

Bringing in an Overseas Act

Many of you will be familiar with the UK Border Agency, run out of the Home Office.  Many different rules have been put in place over the last few years regarding the booking and importing of Artists from overseas to your festival.  The Arts and Entertainment Taskforce, as part of UK Border Agency, is made up of a group of people from the arts world to discuss the current legislation and any changes that they might like to recommend.

Deluge Does Not Stop Priddy

Priddy Folk Festival 2011 started by pumping 2000 gallons of water off the village green after a deluge of biblical proportions, so says Dean Collier, Director of what is now a very successful and well established folk festival in Somerset.

Purple Guide Update

Regular readers will remember that we have been keeping you up to date with the Health & Safety Executive revision of Health & Safety Guide 195 ‘A guide to health, safety & welfare at music and similar events’, known to you and I as the Purple Guide.

Bideford Folk FestivalYear Off?

Bideford Folk Festival directors have made the hard decision to cancel this year's Bideford Folk Festival. With only eight weeks to go to the festival the number of advance Season Ticket sales have not reached the level where the organisers have confidence that the festival will be financially viable.

The decision to cancel was reluctantly made after much discussion and took into account the huge amount of work that has already been done to organise and promote the festival by a hard-working team.

2003 Lincensing Act - Pick Your Partners

2003 Licensing Act - Pick Your Partners
This might seem like a village hall dance it has been going on for so long but word on the street is that the current Government are launching a public consultation this summer which could lead to scrapping the entertainment license altogether, except for very large scale events and adult entertainment such as Pole Dancing.

PRS License - No Increase for 2011 But Watch Out

Festival organisers will remember that 3% of Box Office takings are due to PRS after each festival as a license fee for the performance of music under copy write, fee is subject to VAT at the ruling rate.

Towards the end of 2010 PRS went to public consultation to debate the possibility of changing this fee, by changing everyone assumed they meant increasing, which I think I in all honesty they did.  However, they refer to it as ‘review’.  At the close of consultation only 53 responses have been received from the whole of England, which is a little surprising as many organisations prompted their members to make direct response.

Grants from Funding

PRS Foundation has been supporting New Music for over 10 years and has adapted its policy on applications and grants throughout this period; supporting New Music, Festival and events on a regular basis.  The current timetable suggests that if you were to submit an application in the first week in February you would be hearing from them approximately 8 weeks later, perhaps the first week of April.  Similarly, apply in April and hear by June, apply in August and hear in early October. 

Sponsorship of the Arts

Fylde Folk Festival - Event of the Year

May Bank Holiday Could Change

Plans are well underway amongst Parliamentary power to move the May Bank Holiday, i,e, first Monday of the May into the Autumn, claiming the reason is to spread our Bank Holidays rather than having two in May and nothing after August.  This could end up linked to around the school half-term at the end of October.

The Purple Guide Update

As previously reported, the events and festival industry bible, Health & Safety Executive’s Guide to Outdoor Events, known as The Purple Guide, has been under review for the last couple of years.

The Olympics

The Olympics are clearly gathering pace.  At a recent Events Industry Forum meeting Phil Cholewick, Supply Chain Management Director for the Olympics in London, reported that the procurement business was well underway.

Richard Limb "Remember the Sparkle"

Richard Limb writes for NOEA...

David Cameron says “ were are going to end the unnecessary bureaucracy that drains creativity and innovation”. Lord Young advocates common sense, competence and compensation crack down and talks about rouge Health and safety consultants and red tape. This is on top of Gordon Browns earlier Risk Assessment watchdog aiming to halt the march of the nanny state.

GREEN EVENTS & INITIATIVES: NEW CONFERENCE AND TRA

AGREENERFESTIVAL & BUCKINGHAMSHIRE NEW UNIVERSITY  are delighted to announce the GREEN EVENTS AND INNOVATIONS conference on Wednesday April 20th 2011 at Buckinghamshire New University, Alexandra Road, High Wycombe HP11 1JZ. Trains from Marylebone and Birmingham to High Wycombe.

Suffolk has a year off

The Suffolk Folk Festival is having a year off.   They send this statement

"Sadly, for a combination of reasons, there are currently no plans to hold the Suffolk Folk Festival in 2011.

Live Music Bill receives Government support

Following a debate on the Live Music Bill, reintroduced into the House of Lords by Lord Clement-Jones, the Government has given its backing to the Bill, subject to certain amendments.

The debate was held on Friday, 4 March and attracted speakers from all sides of the House, including Baroness Bakewell, former NCA Chair, all of whom spoke in favour of the Bill and its proposed reforms to the Licensing Act 2003.

City Sessions

The people behind The Festival Awards have launched a series of mini-conferences across Britain to help festival businesses learn...

An Award for Folk

Towards the end of 2010, The Arts Foundation invited AFO and others to nominate candidates for its fellowship award.  Clearly there were going to be many great candidates and after much application writing, numerous auditions and a final concert the judges awarded the prize to Sam Lee.

Trowbridge - Not on in 2011!

We are very sorry to here this bad news from Trowbridge.  NOT ON IN 2011!

Radio Mics. will Cost More

As reported for some time now the Government have been planning a sell off the band frequencies that cover such things as Radio Mics for stage presentation.  The Government has now approved a move to clear radio channels 31-37 and 61-69, of all existing technologies that use them, including over 95% of the UKs stocks of wireless microphones, in ear monitoring systems and talk-back.

Police Flexing Muscles on License Already

At the recent Southsea Thai Food Festival the police objected to a beer licence on the grounds that alcohol might be passed out of the licensed area to young people.  Solicitor Philip Day of Horsey Lightly Fynn (an regular supported of AFO) took up the case and won the day.  Is this the beginning of deeper police involvement with Licensing in community events?

See next item regarding the Home Office to take on part of the Licensing brief (as reported in AFO News sometime ago - and denied).

Licensing moves to the Home Office

Government changes have been announced affecting the responsibilities licensing.  Responsibility for the Licensing Act 2003which affects Festivals is now partly with the Home Office.

Long Live Creative Scotland

As promised previously, from 1 July 2010 Scotland’s Arts Council and Screen Agency have come together as Creative Scotland.

Sprinkle Pixie Dust

You might well book big stars, support acts and unknown names for your festivals in 2011 but to really give that festival feel that makes the difference you need what we call ‘Pixie Dust’.  There is no better place to find this than at ISAN - The Independent Street Arts Network.

Cuts, Local Authorities, Arts & Your Festival

There is no doubt at all that we are gradually being groomed to see that cuts in local authority funding are the fault of someone else who perhaps previously ran the Government.  Some might think the fault lies more with the banking fraternity.  Whichever way you feel inclined to throw the blame, the current Punch & Judy show is certainly going to make serious cut backs. 

Office of Fair Trading Warn of Fake Online Tickets

I have no reports that this has yet affected our festival corner but you can bet your life somebody will be thinking of it.  Do warn your customers to beware.  Buy only from your official agency site, no where else. 

The Licensing Act Revision is back on the Schedule

Lord Clement-Jones has resurrected his Live Music Bill in the Houses of Parliament.  Live Music Forum have delivered a 17,000 signature petition to Downing Street. 

Don’t Think it Won’t Get to You

Arts Council England have outlined today how they will cut around £19m from their budgets.  They have reserves which they now have permission to use and they are planning approximately a 0.5% reduction across the board for RFOs.  This could mean a small cut for folk music development, the brief currently held by EFDSS.

Safe Child & Vulnerable Adults

The new Government have halted progress on Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS), due to come into play with voluntary registration on the 26 July 2010.  The following full statement gives you the whole picture and explains how you should be geared up for the current ISA legislation and gives you some hints as to what is coming in VBS in the future.  This will effect how you look after children and vulnerable adults at your festival.  I recommend you read it.

All Change in the Government's Musical Chair Game

The following candidates have been elected to chair select committees in the new Parliament.  There are literally hundreds but the ones that mostly effect the festival world are: Culture, Media & Sport: John Whittingdale; Children, School & Families (Education): Graham Stuart; Home Affairs: Keith Vaz.

What is Risk Assessment?

As a festival organiser you will almost certainly be asked by your local authority and others to produce your Risk Assessment.  Only a few years ago many of us were conducting what are now called RAs but in more recent years they have been formalised by the Health & Safety Executive and have certainly been adopted by most local authorities.

Government Recognise Creative Industries

In a recent quote Rt. Hon Vince Cable MP, Secretary of Business, Innovation and Skills said: "In the long term [it is about] having a clearer vision about the kind of economy Britain is going to have and how we are going to earn our living...Geographically we need to be better balanced and not so dependent on the City of London and we also need to be structurally better balanced in regards to manufacturing, knowledge industries and the creative industries."

All Party Parliamentary Group supporting Folk Arts

Some readers may remember that we established this group during the pervious parliament, chaired by John Battle MP (Labour, Leeds West).  John has now retired but the group lives on and is shortly to be reassembled under the provisional leadership of Alan Keen MP (Labour).  If you believe your MP (whatever party) would be interested in joining the group and supporting your work in folk, roots and traditional music and/or festival management then do let me know and I will make the necessary applications available.

University Research Set to Influence Crowd Safety

Buckinghamshire New University was commissioned by the Royal Borough for Kensington and Chelsea and funded by the Health and Safety Executive to undertake research into the management of crowd safety at unusual and outdoor street events.

The findings, which are significant to events and event organisers throughout the country, are now published on the HSE website in a new report identifying areas of good practice in crowd safety. The full report is available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr790.pdf

Festivals & Events Boost the Economy

Business Visits & Events Partnership, an organisation that brings together such bodies as the Events Industry Forum, Visit Britain and DCMS, has recently conducted research culminating in a manifesto for the events industry.  Some of the figures are valuable to us as festival organisers in our search for grants and sponsors.  You can safely say, as a festival organiser, that your event is part of Britain’s cultural economy but did you ever consider that internal and international tourism also plays its part.  People travel miles within the UK boundaries to come to your event and spend money locally.

Goodall for President

The Association of Festival Organisers is delighted that Howard Goodall has very kindly agreed to carry over his Honorary President position of FolkArts England to The Association of Festival Organisers.