The free training session on how to organise an outdoor music event was moderately useful. If you are going to put on an evening of teaching people how to run things it is probably a good idea to mention in the invitation that the entrance to The Lecture Room, Northgate Street is not actually in Northgate Street, but round the corner in Old Foundry Road. I walked up and down the entire length of Northgate Street, before asking for help in the library which was the only place that was open, and discovering that The Lecture Room was part of the library, though not accessed through it or signposted from the Northgate Street entrance. I arrived three minutes late, hot and rather flustered, which was not a good start, though it served me right for not giving myself more time, given that I don't know Ipswich well. The organisers were very soothing about my late arrival at the event managers' trainers' ball, and we spent another seven minutes waiting for the last person on the list to turn up, but they didn't.
The other people at the session all sang in local choirs, and were there for much the same reasons as I was, hoping to learn a bit more about how to gain publicity for our events, and how to stay on the right side of the law, particularly with reference to public safety, and licencing and copyright issues. I think we were all a little surprised to discover that though the evening had been marketed through the National Federation of Music Societies, the focus was on an Olympics driven arts project called The Bandstand Marathon, which is a scheme to persuade people to act as music promoters for the day and put on four hours of music in their local bandstand (or other public space) on the afternoon of the final Sunday of the Paralympics. I was perfectly certain that I was not going to do that. I'll be at work, for a start, and as the music society put on a special concert for the Diamond Jubilee weekend I'm sure they won't want to do another one in the second week of September.
We all listened obediently to the rallying talk about the bandstand project, and took part in an ice breaking exercise talking about bandstands, and so progressed by degrees to the meat of the subject, and I managed to acquire some fresh understanding about what a Temporary Events Licence is and when you might need one, and how to get one if you did, and how to do a risk assessment that would pass muster with a local authority. The booklet being handed out had quite a lot in it, if you skipped through the bandstand specific elements. I'm sorry for the woman promoting the bandstand project, but not very, having been invited on slightly false pretences. At least I turned up, which is more than any of the people booked into the afternoon session.
I'm not especially bullish about the prospects for The Bandstand Marathon, if they are still looking for people to start organising events, less than two months before they are due to happen. The grant available for each event is £350 to fill four hours of music, so basically they are looking for bands and groups willing to play for free. I'd have thought that most halfway decent self-respecting groups capable of playing a large outdoor space started thinking about their bookings for 2013 some time ago, so I'm not too sure who would be available at seven weeks notice to perform for no fee on a Sunday afternoon. The list of bandstands still to be filled in the Eastern region looked rather long, and included the one in Colchester Castle Park. But maybe I'm just being a killjoy, and it will all come together on the day
At half past nine the caretaker put his head round the door in a highly meaningful fashion, and our time was up. It wasn't a bad evening, but for a three hour event you could have packed a lot more in.
I'm narrowing down the unexplained honey sales at the Show to an amount that the Show Secretary puts within normal variation for her stand at a farmers' market on an ordinary day, not in pouring rain and a sea of mud. The discovery that 19 slices of honey cake sold at 75 pence a slice had been left off the schedule filled a big part of the gap.
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