Re: electro-music festival June 1-3 Philadelphia

["Matt Davignon" <mattdavignon@gmail.com>]

On 5/21/07, legion@helpwantedproductions.com was like:
> The basic deal is all performers are required to buy the three day ticket
> for the weekend and they don't get paid. According to the folks I talked
> to this is to help them break even and also to create
> participation/community/what have you.

Ah - that's what it was. Are you one of the people that puts this on?
I was curious about that. As someone who organizes shows and some
festivals in the San Francisco area, the prices seem a bit high for a
festival of this nature.

I'm not trying to knock the festival or discourage people from
participating - it looks like one of the more promising electronic
events on the east coast. In the least accusatory voice I can muster,
I'm curious - what's going on? Are festivals that much more expensive
to put on on the east coast? Is there a really high overhead for the
space rental or advertising costs?

Comparatively, one festival I work on invites artists, pays them, pays
for plane tickets for out of towners, writes some grant requests and
does local fund raising, and winds up charging the audience about 25%
less.

Another festival I used to work on, the Big Sur experimental music
festival, had an 'open invite' for up to 100 musicians working
collaboratively. Using entirely online promotion, our only
organizational cost was the venue. Tickets were $15 for the 2 day
festival. Artists only had to pay for their own camping and travel.
Artists didn't get paid, but neither did the organizers, and it didn't
cost a lot of $$ to put it on.

I don't personally have a lot of experience with grantwriting, but
from an outsiders point of view, it looks like the Electro-Music
festival has a lot of qualities that grant providers look for, a
community aspect with lectures, demos, jam sessions, etc.

>