BAFA Conference 2018: Thank you for coming!

We hope you’ve got your breath back after our conference in Birmingham. It was a jam-packed 24 hours of inspiring presentations, networking, industry updates, member-to-member learning and socialising, and a huge thanks to everyone who made it such a brilliant, engaged atmosphere.  It was fantastic to see so many members at the conference, and to see so many new attendees too.  We are in the process of putting together a post-conference report, to include slides and notes, and will circulate this to all delegates and members next month.  In the meantime, if you haven’t already completed theconference survey, please do – it will take 2 minutes and will really help us plan next year. Thank you!
 

 

Our wonderful conference keynote speakers, Peter Florence of Hay Festival and Tamar Brüggemann of Netherlands’ Wonderfeel, spoke eloquently about the European Festival Association’s EFFE (Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe) programme. They are both members of the international jury for the EFFE label, which is shortly being launched for 2019-2020. BAFA is proud to be the EFFE UK hub, responsible for engaging all UK festivals in EFFE’s activities, and last week EFFE launched the Festival Finder website.  This ambitious website aims to provide a comprehensive free festivals listings service across Europe, and it is free to register.  Registration is easy and will help promote your festival beyond UK borders – something which is becoming increasingly important as Brexit looms next year.  Please do register your festival and help to spread the word as all UK arts festivals are eligible to join.