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Writer's picturemartin8871

Getting a choir festival going


Vision - Come up with a vision for your festival. Imagine a scenario where money is no object. What could your festival look like? What will be the overall theme of the festival? What do you want your festival to achieve? What legacy do you want to leave behind? An Example: “our vision to create a fun, interesting, artistically diverse festival that is welcoming to everyone”, back this up with an overview of your vision. Location- where is your festival taking place, a city, group of towns, a region etc Venues - Consider what venues and spaces would be the best fit for your festival vision, work out the core costs by looking at the standard hire price list and estimate the cost of all the extras from those lists. You can come back and negotiate charges later. Maybe pencil in possible and available dates. Size - Look at previous festivals and consider how many choirs and registered people might attend and how many other people will engage with your festival. Coming up with the number so people you may want to plan for. Choir slots - Work out your minimum and maximum required number of choir slots needed. If each slot was 30 minutes, how many slots would you have in each performance block. You need to plan at least 30 minutes between each performance block to move the audience in and out and for the venue to perform security checks.. Start / End times - What time of day do you want to start your festival activities and concerts and what time do you want to finish choir performance blocks and concerts. Open/Closing - Do you plan to have an opening and closing event, what does that look like and how long will they be, where and when. Big Concerts - Do you think you will have any other big concerts / blockbusters, what time of day / evening


Other Activities - think about any other activities you might want to plan, outreach performances away from the core venues, flash mobs, workshops, meetings, social events, other activities and tourist activity like sightseeing etc Pencil In Your Events - Thinking about your venues / spaces, start and end times for each day, pencil in your key concerts, events and activities Length - How long is your festival, do you need to rethink the number of events or timings. When -what dates work best, if you look at the other events / activity in the area and the availability of possible venues/space options, you can begin to pencil in dates. You can negotiate on costs and charges when you have a frimer idea of plans, your needs and requirements. Adjust / Edit - make changes to fit your plans into the overall time framework Sponsors / Grants/ Supporters - make a list of possible sources of support, connect with allies and friends to get help, advice and to plan possible introductions. Make a economic assessment for your festival, to seek during and sponsors. How much money will you bring into the local economy and how will you add value to ancillary businesses. This will help to justify why you should get support, Also think about how many jobs will you add to the local economy Government - what kind of support could you expect from national country, regional and local governments. Research the application processes. Tourist Boards - who are they and what kind of support might you expect from them and can they help now and later on. Economic Impact - make some simple calculations about how much money your festival will bring to the area. Ask us for a help sheet Budget - time to work on the budget ask us for a example. The Information Required - this sheet allows you to play around with all the variables and auto calculates your projected results in the Example Budget Example budget - will enable you to add all your fixed costs against the size of your festival and use the Information sheet to play with costs and other variables like numbers, other income streams, registrations costs etc This budget is very comprehensive and detailed. You may choose to group items together for presentation purposes. But the assessment panel will require to see a budget of this nature at both stages of the bid process. For the costs that you don't know, you should review other festival results, do research or just guess-timate (not recommended for novices).


The spreadsheet is locked and we suggest you save your master spreadsheet and play with additional copies until you are familiar with how it works. There are a lot of built-in calculations and you can add items to suit your circumstances. You should not unlock this sheet unless you know exactly what you are doing.


This is an example budget only and we strongly suggest you get local experts to review and check any information you add to your spreadsheets. We have added a contingency that you can adjust but 10% is the norm; this will ensure you realistically plan for unforeseen circumstances and expenses. You should consider event insurance.


Further help or advice please email:info@intergraplanner.com

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