Two
months to go! |
14.3.08 With all
the amazing events that happened in London over the International Women's Day
weekend, we had a busy few days promoting Ladyfest. On Saturday we marched at
Million Women Rise, zipping around the rally at Trafalgar Square afterwards, handing
out our new proper printed colour flyers and chatting to people in the crowds
(hopefully a good strategy to stop people from just throwing the flyer in the
bin later). This was a great opportunity of reaching many new women and feminists,
many of whom weren't familiar with Ladyfest. Whether they'll come is another thing
of course but at least they'll know it's going on (and maybe tell some other people).
Then
on Sunday daytime we had a stall at the amazing feminist gathering which took
place at the newly opened Hackney Social Centre and in the evening we headed down
to Elephant & Castle to do another stall at the Mad Chicks event, which was
lots of fun. We don't have any real merchandise yet so the stall didn't make any
money but it's a good way of getting people to sign up to our mailing list and
just getting the message out there that Ladyfest London is happening soon (a little
too soon for my liking!!!) Aside
from stepping up the publicity, funding is our top concern at the moment and the
one some of us are starting to lose sleep over… Raising the cash has not
proved an easy task, and the expenses in a city like London are, well, expensive.
Funding applications are long and draining. Unfortunately we don't have any fundraising
experts in our midst so we've had to plod along as best we can with the limited
time and resources and energy we could spend on them. We've only made one successful
bid so far and it's looking increasingly unlikely that we'll be given any more
money from funders. Hopefully most of the expenditure will be recouped through
ticket sales (although that's also a worry and we obviously want to keep tickets
as cheap as possible) but in the meantime we're looking at a very acute cashflow
situation in the lead-up to the festival which we're scratching our heads trying
to solve at the moment. Throughout
the summer and autumn we held a number of benefit gigs and other events to raise
money but these take a lot of time and energy to organise in themselves and at
this stage of the actual festival-planning most of us don't have the time to devote
to putting on smaller gigs. So we're on the lookout for easy and quick fundraising
ideas. And donations! (Seriously, if you do have ideas or want to get involved,
please do get in touch: info@ladyfestlondon.co.uk) So
that was the boring bit… In
more exciting news, things are really starting to come together in terms of the
programme. Most musicians, workshops, speakers, artists and films are in the process
of being confirmed and we're meeting this weekend to look at scheduling. This
is exciting! Seeing how everything is coming together, realising how many different
and amazing things are going to happen all in one weekend! I'm keeping tight-lipped
for now but keep a lookout on our website as the programme should be announced
in the next few weeks. It's gonna be amazing, I promise!
The
Road to Ladyfest London | 25.1.08 This
spring Ladyfest will return to London, coming to take over town (well almost anyway)
on 9th-11th of May. I am part of the group of ladies (and a few gents) organising
it and Kat has kindly invited me to blog here in the run up to the festival. So
over the upcoming months I'll do my best to provide some kind of insight into
the whole organising process, which has been everything from exciting, to frustrating
to inspiring to messy to exhausting and back again – and that was just last
week!
So
to start with, here's a very brief history of what's happened so far… (and
I should probably stress at this point that this is obviously my take on events
only and I'm not trying to speak for any of the other organisers)
November
2006 (yes 2006!)
First meeting. About 20 of us turned up to Weatherspoons
in Angel and tried to cram round a table meant for about 8. It was exciting to
see so many people were keen to get involved but we couldn't hear anything of
what the people at the other side of the table were saying! We did manage to write
our email addresses down on a bit of paper though and soon after a mailing list
and myspace page were born. January
- May 2007
Personally I dropped out for a bit but there were a few meetings
during this time (now held at the London Action Resource Centre) which, from what
I gather, mostly centred around organising benefit gigs to start raising some
money, coming up with wish lists about what people wanted see at the festival,
deciding on the date, and publicising the group as the attendance had dropped
quite dramatically from the initial meeting. The Underworld in Camden was booked
as the music venue. Some deciding factors were the size (500 capacity), the central
location, that it's an all-ages venue and that it's not owned by Carling (which
sadly most larger venues in London seem to be these days). The
first couple of benefit gigs were held and a small amount of cash started to accumulate,
with raffle and cakes turning out to be great little earners. The money raised
was immediately spent on paying the deposit for the Underworld. We had a stall
to recruit volunteers at the Zine Fest at the Women's Library in May and put together
the first issue of the Ladyfest London zine. June
We
all got together at Pogo Café (a co-op vegan café in Hackney), ate
cake and decided on our aims. Inspired by a recent Feminist Activist Forum meeting
which involved lots of bits of paper and bluetack and marker pens in order to
come up with a consensus-based mission statement, we tried something similar.
There were about 15 or so people at the meeting and we all broke up into groups
of 3-4 and wrote down what we felt were the key aims for the festival. Then we
went through and tried to match up what the different groups had written and from
this emerged our list of aims. It was a fun night and I was excited to see the
more overtly political and feminist aspects featuring prominently on people's
lists (our aims are listed on our myspace page). Around
this time we also decided to set up working groups for different aspects of the
festival (eg music, workshops, finance, publicity etc). In hindsight I'm not sure
that's worked so well but more on that another time. The
finance group (which due to a mysterious compulsion I decided to join) also set
up a community group bank account with the Cooperative Bank. We were stressing
about trying to write a lengthy business plan but when I rang them up they said
all we needed was a one-page explanation of who we were, how many people were
involved, what our turnover would be and how we planned to make our money back.
Easy! September
The
finance group just managed to get an application in on time to the Feminist Review
Trust to apply for some money to fund the workshops and panel discussions programme.
They award anything up to £10,000 and have a relatively straight forward
application compared to other funders. Plus they're feminists! With
regular benefit gigs and an ever expanding myspace friends list, lots of new people
started to turn up for the general meetings, which continued to be held about
once a month. Most working groups on the other hand were still struggling to get
off the ground. With most of us in full-time work or studying as well as committed
to other projects, it was difficult to find times when all or even most working
group members were available. Even after a date had been confirmed, it was pretty
common for only 2 people to turn up. Ladyfest just seemed so far away so other
things tended to take priority. November
The
group got a much needed energy-boost as a number of super-organised and enthusiastic
new women joined. All of a sudden a 5-strong film group was born and an awesome
comedy benefit was organised in Hackney, compeered by Josie Long. At the end of
the month we also found out that we'd been awarded £1,000 by the Feminist
Review Trust! December
After
a lot of faffing around about how much we could afford and what exactly it was
we needed and wanted, the venues for the workshops, speaker panels and films,
were booked. We went with two very different spaces. One is the Resource Centre
on Holloway Road, which is a non-profit all-purpose built conference centre and
quite formal-looking but with great rooms in different sizes for panels and discussion-based
workshops (and wait til we get all our Ladyfest bunting & stalls up all over
the place!). The other is the Islington Arts Factory which is beautiful arty space
in a converted old church which will be perfect for film screenings as well as
all the practical and arts and music based workshops. With a bit more money in
the bank we could easily cover the deposits, which was one of the reasons why
booking more venues had been delayed until this point. So
that brings me up to January. I've probably missed out lots of things but those
are some of the key milestones so far. More to come soon… ! | 
