25 replies to this topic

[Joshuwarr]

Just some general questions regarding organising a small festival (up to around 3,000 people)

Just want to know how much it costs organising such an event. Where the money comes from (coz I find it hard to believe that all organisers are minted from the beginning). And any other general info about organising a festival would be great to hear

ALSO, how hard/easy is it to find some land to use for a festival and how much would that cost?

[BinThereDrummedThat]

I guess you're planning on starting one then?

Its a HUGE responsibility. The costs are massive.  

Firstly you need to find some land - the cost depends on who owns it.  You'll also probably need to return it to its original state after the festival has finished, which can cost loads.

So you have land, then you need to work out layout.  How many stages?  Tents?  Where will you get them from?  You need lights, sound equipment and all the infrastructure - again huge costs.  

Then you get into booking bands - to do this you need money.  Sponsorships and ticket sales.  You need to get anything and everything sponsored, not the idealistic view of a festival, but its the only way to get the right amount of cash.  Then in your first year ticket sales are unlikely to be massive.  So you need to be prepared to make a loss on your first few years.  Latitude - a renowned music festival is still losing money year on year.  

This is before you get into the issues of volounteers, insurance, legal issues such as planning and permission...the list is endless.

Its impossible unless you have cash, are prepared to work on it full time and have the right contacts in the music industry.

[Joshuwarr]

I'm trying to think realistically, im not just gonna suddenly organise something for next year. this is probably a plan of about 3+ years.

[moonfestmadness]

the hardest work is the background tasks .....if you are really interested in setting one up for your self.. i would seriously advise you get a copy of the purple guide ... that will give you all of the legal side of the festival...

[reefer432]

I'd definitely recommend starting small and growing to 3k rather than planning a 3k festival in 3 years  time. Maybe 500 this year, a thousand next etc...

[Suzannah]

Good luck you'll need it

[Dawn on the Lawn]

It totally depends how you do it, I've started a festival this year www.dawnonthelawn.co.uk between 500 and 1000 capacity.

The costs can massively vary depending on contacts. I have been working with a London record label all year so have a decent price for my dj's and also knew a very good events company to sort out tents, lighting, sound. The main hidden costs you need to watch out for are:

Personal public alcohol licence £150
Application to the council £20-200 depending on capacity.
Public insurance up to 10 million about £300
Generators and back up power approx £1000
Toilets £500-1000
Ticket companies add between 3-10% on to all bookings if you use one to sell your tickets so obviously you need to price accordingly.
Security, barriers etc..really quite expensive depending on capacity at least £2000

There are many more!

Make sure you plan well in advance and have the time or support of others that you can trust. Its always going to be a gamble but go for it! Give me a shout if you need any more help.

[TheSeventhOne]

I'd love to one day organise a festival too, some interesting factors to consider indeed.

[Rufus Gwertigan]

Joshuwarr, on Apr 19 2009, 10:22 PM, said:

I'm trying to think realistically, im not just gonna suddenly organise something for next year. this is probably a plan of about 3+ years.

Start simple with a one day event, or a couple of days for less than 500 folk then you only need a Temporary Entertainment Licence. Believe it or not to aim at 3,000 for a first festival would be a task.

I help organise some big parties and thats hard enough

[BeardedTheory]

I think the thrase is, start small grow organically.

The license costs all depend on what county your in really.

Our license costs this year were massive, just short of 10k. We used a good lawyer as the council were quite tricky and we had to appoint a health and safety consultant to undertake all the risk assesments as this was the only way the council would be happy. You have to be prepared to lose this should your licence be turned down. This is where we were cacking ourselves this year.

The band deposits are huge and the bigger names demand 50% in some cases before you can release their name on advertising. You need to have this cash available upfront.

Also all the contractors generally demand 50% upfront if your a new event and I would imagine in the current financial climate a lot more are requesting 50% if not more up front.

Security have to be SIA and many firms are £15 an hour per man. You need 24 hour coverage.

The list is endless but if you start small and offer good value, your name will spread. You need a good marketing plan as well, good marketing costs money and its trial and error to find out what works and what doesnt. As people have said make sure you have good people around you, if you do, your part way there!!  

[Paul ™]

All good advise Rich

Be prepared also to make a loss

[pehaw]

I don't know where you are based but...

There is a seminar entitled 'Setting up large-scale live events and festivals' taking place at Northern Stage in Newcastle on Wednesday 20th May 18:00 - 20:00.

This is a free event but you need to book a place

In attendance will be

Jim King
"Director of Loud Sound, Promoter for Rockness & responsible for Bestival and Creamfields production."

James Barton
"Founder of club-night Cream and Director of Creamfield brand"

Jim Mawdsley
"Director of Evolution and CEO of Generator"

Chaired by Dave Stone
"Talent booker & Marketing Director of Evolution festival"

To book a place contact Joe at Generator

Generator
2nd Floor
Black Swan Court
69 Westgate Road
Newcastle
NE1 1SG
0191 245 0099 EXT 4

joe@generator.org.uk



(on the next night, "In conversation with Geoff Travis - founder of Rough Trade" - again free)

[Magic42]

Paul ™, on Apr 21 2009, 10:32 PM, said:

All good advise Rich

Be prepared also to make a loss

Never a truer word..........  

[snorky]

A small festival in Cornwall got funding through Dragons Den.

You could get funding through Princes' Trust, from local businesses or by being sponsored by bigger brands.

I'd say the best way to start a festival is make contacts- gain work experience from people organising a festival the size of one you'd like to begin, get in touch with nearby farms/Landowners/local council to see if anyone's interested in helping.

Maybe find the runners of 3-4 local successful club nights and ask if they want to get involved, all taking charge of a different stage/tent.

Get the community involved- in return for favours you'll advertise services or promote local artists, film makers, poets, comedians etc

Bands can be expensive to hire- contact agencies and record labels- they may give a reduced rate for a big name if you agree to put a smaller artist of theirs on the bill. It's also considerably cheaper to get a band to DJ than to perform.

I think it'd be easier to organise a festival held in proper venues like Brighton's Great Escape or The Camden Crawl than in a field. Less health and safety measures and no worries of the stages not being built in time.

You'd have to also get in touch with the Police, there maybe some laws or licenses you'll need to be aware of. You'll also need a lawyer.

Good luck, start of small and if it's good it's likely to become bigger

Edited by snorky, 23 April 2009 - 05:29 PM.

[eFestivals]

snorky, on Apr 23 2009, 06:27 PM, said:

A small festival in Cornwall got funding through Dragons Den.

it didn't actually.

It hooked all of the dragons with a projected profit over five years of 100%, with that profit being £6.3M .... and that five years included it's already-run first fest where it made a loss of £30k. There was not a hope in hell of it ever making profits at that level.

With such fantastic profits being claimed it's not surprising that they hooked all five dragons - after all, profits at those sorts of levels from a relatively small investment (I forget how much they were asking for, but it was somewhere around £100k) sounds fantastic.

But anyway, the official version is that after having agreed a deal with dragon Peter Jones, they decided to go instead with an existing events company and not Jones. However, I suspect that mixed in there somewhere is a realisation by Jones that those profits would never materialise, because they are massively greater than the profits that the very best in the industry get close to (for example, I believe it's the case that in all the years that Mean Fiddler have run Reading Festival they didn't make a profit until about 2002).

And how is that festival doing now? I'd be somewhat surprised if two years later its made more than £50k profit.

[LevellerRich]

snorky, on Apr 23 2009, 06:27 PM, said:

You'd have to also get in touch with the Police, there maybe some laws or licenses you'll need to be aware of.

Licencing isn't a grey area, it's black and white.  You need a licence.

To get a licence you'll need not only the support of the police, but plenty of others, perhaps most importantly the local council's Health & Safety Officer.

Even if your licence is granted, it can be revoked at any time if any of the licencing parties are unhappy with your execution.

Your licence is more important than your line-up...  You could come up with a business plan that could get you U2, but it won't happen without a licence.

[naarjtie]

LevellerRich, on Apr 24 2009, 02:57 PM, said:

Licencing isn't a grey area, it's black and white.  You need a licence.

To get a licence you'll need not only the support of the police, but plenty of others, perhaps most importantly the local council's Health & Safety Officer.

For a premises licence this is very true.

Have a look at the Guardians guide to small festivals in 2009 - small in this case being anything from 3000 to 10,000, so potentially quite large for what you want to do. It's suprising just how many festivals started off as a few friends in a field. My suggestion to anyone looking to start a festival would be to start off at 500 or so capacity and get a taste of running an event, perhaps with the aim to run a 3000 capacity show a few years down the line. By that time you'll have a proven track record so outside funding and sourcing of sponsorship might be a lot easier to get.

A small 500< capacity festival is really simple to licence using a Temporary Events Notice (commonly referred to as a TENs) which, for a fee of £21 I think, you can licence an event to a capacity of 499 people for music, catering and alcohol sales for a maximum 72 hour period.

From what I remember, only the police can object to the event - and only on the grounds of crime and disorder. Upon receiving the form, police have but 48 hours to lodge any objections.

[BeardedTheory]

naarjtie, on Apr 24 2009, 03:28 PM, said:

For a premises licence this is very true.

Have a look at the Guardians guide to small festivals in 2009 - small in this case being anything from 3000 to 10,000, so potentially quite large for what you want to do. It's suprising just how many festivals started off as a few friends in a field. My suggestion to anyone looking to start a festival would be to start off at 500 or so capacity and get a taste of running an event, perhaps with the aim to run a 3000 capacity show a few years down the line. By that time you'll have a proven track record so outside funding and sourcing of sponsorship might be a lot easier to get.

A small 500< capacity festival is really simple to licence using a Temporary Events Notice (commonly referred to as a TENs) which, for a fee of £21 I think, you can licence an event to a capacity of 499 people for music, catering and alcohol sales for a maximum 72 hour period.

From what I remember, only the police can object to the event - and only on the grounds of crime and disorder. Upon receiving the form, police have but 48 hours to lodge any objections.

The TEN is only heard by the Police and they generally look for a health and Safety policy and SIA security to be at the event. However I was chatting to a very small festival in Derbyshire last week and they had been given a TEN but the health and safety officials had poked their nose in demanding fire certificates etc for all the marquees and risk assesments.

If you applied for a 1k license you might as well as well apply for a 4999 licence as the structure and work is pretty much the same. A lot of work is required on these, 350 page document we compiled and we seem to have procedures for blowing your nose, silly really and the whole license procedure is far to political, with less rational sense.

Edited by BeardedTheory, 25 April 2009 - 10:12 AM.

[oxsandra]

You may find that in some places that before a TEN is issued, or even with a TEN in place, you have to appear before and satisfy the conditions of a local government Safety Advisory Group or similar before the event can be run. This group usually consists of local councillors, representatives from the Police, Fire, Ambulance, Environmental Health and other interested parties.

Some local councils also have an events team who offer guidance and oversee local events. It's worth getting them on your side from the start if they exist in the area you are thinking of holding the festival in.

You may also have to prove that you have H&S, First Aid, Security etc covered before you can get insurance. Insurance is essential. I would recommend at the very least £5million Public Liablity Insurance, but in reality cover for other things including temporary buildings (tents, loos, porta cabins etc), equipment, cash, employers liabilty cover (even if all of your employees are volunteers) and cancellation should all be seriously considered. If you are forming a limited company to organise the event you might want to include director's liabilities in there as well.

Sadly the days when you could decide to put on an event in a field with little or no red tape involved are long over.

When I first started thinking about organising a festival I asked a long established festival organiser for advice. She handed me a piece of paper with one word on it - DON'T!

I didn't take the advice but I can see now why she said it. If you do it do it for the love of it, not for money, as it is not a road to get rich quick on.

[Medina]

There's an awful lot of good advice on this thread from people who know what they're talking about... often through bitter personal experiences of their own!

If you're still intent on pursuing your dream then do particularly heed the advice on licensing (and talk with your local authority and the emergency services at an early stage).  Without a licence you won't have an event.  

Do your homework and read the Event Safety Guide.  If the people who determine your licence can see that you know what you're doing and have the staff and resources to meet all their requirements, then they are far more likely to approve your licence, albeit with numerous conditions attached.

Don't expect to make a profit, especially in your first year.  Most events run at a loss for several years before moving into profit.  Some never survive that long.  Be realistic.  Start small.  Don't attempt what you cannot realistically achieve.

The world is littered with failed festival organisers.  But there are also a few who have succeeded in creating popular, safe, well-organised, long-lasting, extremely enjoyable and financially viable events.

If nobody took the risk to start out, there would be no festivals for any of us to attend... so good luck!