[ivfdf-news] IVFDF 2006 Progress Report

Andrew Swaine andrew-ivfdfnews at swaine.me.uk
Sat Feb 19 13:04:00 GMT 2005


It's now a year since we agreed to host IVFDF 2006 in Cambridge, and we've 
had a busy year.  IVFDF 2001 in Cambridge was extremely successful, but we 
believe we can do even better this time.

IVFDF 2005 is only a week away, and we are ready to present our progress at 
the reps meeting.  Rather than reading out a long report, or handing out 
reams of paper at the door, we are making our report available in advance 
so that those concerned can read it before the meeting.  This report is too 
long to be read out at the meeting, but there will be a limited number of 
paper copies available.

Anne Wyatt, our lead external adviser, is unfortunately not able to attend 
the meeting itself, so will also be sending a few words to this list 
shortly.  For full details of the new process, see 
http://www.ivfdf.org/doc/informationpoint/constitutionv5.html

After reading this report and Anne's words, you should be able to:
* vote to confirm our bid to hold IVFDF 2006
* vote to provide the £1000 underwriting we have requested
* tell your societies, friends, family, workmates, clubs, festival-goers 
and anyone else you can think of what a fabulous festival IVFDF 2006 is 
going to be!

See you at IVFDF 2005.


IVFDF 2006 PROGRESS REPORT, IVFDF 2005


Budget

Tickets shall be held at 2005 prices; i.e. £20/£13 before 31st January, 
£22/£15 on the door.  Prices for other tickets have also been set, broadly 
in line with previous festivals.  We have budgeted for a total of 375 
weekend tickets (plus 50 steward tickets), and a total of 505 people at the 
Festival on Saturday evening.  We are also expecting up to £500 funding 
from the RSCDS (depending on their financial position) and another £500 
private donation in memory of Susan Nedderman, a Cambridge Scottish dance 
teacher for many years.

We have applied to the City Council for funding for local advertising, 
which will not be decided upon until the new financial year in 
April.  Applications to Awards for All are hindered due to the need for 
local focus; this will be sought if the City Council application is 
unsuccessful.  We have been unable to make an application to Arts Council 
England until the IVFDF 2005 application has been processed.

Overall we have budgeted for £8,000 of ticket revenue, bringing our total 
budgeted income to £9,000.

Expenditure is budgeted as follows:
£4,500: events
£1,250: venues
£1,750: acoustic improvements, PA, lighting, licences, first aid, etc.
   £600: publicity (if we get more money it will go here first)
   £100: admin
   £400: steward expenses (e.g. t-shirts)
   £400: contingency


Venues

Following on from the success of holding IVFDF 2001 in a school, we have 
been lucky enough to find another large school to hold IVFDF 2006, which 
this time is prepared to hire out the whole school for the weekend for 
£1250.  This is because they have a policy of charging half rate for 
student activities.  That's about £3000 less than we paid last time, so 
moving was an easy decision.  The school in question is the Netherhall 
School and Sixth Form Centre, in South East Cambridge.  It's not all on the 
one site -- the Upper School and Sixth Form are on one side of the road, 
with the Lower School on the other -- but we don't think that people will 
mind crossing the road between events from time to time!

The largest venue is the sports hall.  This is a huge but acoustically 
unforgiving hall, so we will be spending money to improve the acoustics by, 
for example, providing for sound damping and sufficient professional 
PA.  We think that having a sprung floor and lots of space will more than 
make this worthwhile.


Events

Given the cheap venue cost, and the donations explicitly for the purpose of 
running a Scottish dance, we have allocated a large events budget totalling 
£4,500.  While every credit must be given to IVFDF 2005 for their "ceilidh 
marathon", we have opted for a more traditional format until the success of 
IVFDF 2005 can be evaluated.

The funding we have been given for the Scottish dance has enabled us to do 
something quite special: Sandy Brechin will be bringing his band "The 
Sensational Jimmy Shandrix Experience", which includes James Gray who 
played for us so successfully in 2001.  We are confident this will broaden 
the appeal of the usual Scottish dance.  It will attract a large number of 
regular Scottish dancers and non-regular dancers alike, looking for an 
exciting, high-energy Scottish dance rarely to be found this far south of 
the border.  It will also attract those who just want a chance to see this 
amazing band!  Given how much he contributed to the success of the 2001 
Scottish dance, we have booked Andrew Kellett again as caller.  He will do 
an excellent job of ensuring that the dance will be accessible to all.

Sandy has also agreed to play for late-night dancing, and we intend to have 
programmed events up to 1am as a result. However, there are some issues 
with the school to be ironed out (they normally ask for music to cease at 
midnight).

We have booked Boka Halat for the Saturday night.  Ever since this band 
first did a Sidmouth LNE (when the audience would not let them go until 
they did an encore dance) we've known that IVFDF is the perfect audience 
for them.  For those that haven't been lucky enough to dance to these guys, 
they combine traditional rhythms from around the world, then play English 
dance tunes over the top.  Roger Watson, the band leader, calls dances 
designed to work best to their unique style.

Running alongside Boka Halat, we have booked Sheila Mainwaring, and are 
trying to book the band to go with her, although we have not yet succeeded 
in getting confirmation from them this far in advance.  This event will be 
more conventional in style, but no less energetic, especially given 
Sheila's talent for eclectic dances!

No IVFDF these days is complete without a Contra.  We really wanted to get 
some Americans over for this, and we've succeeded -- we have an American 
caller and two-piece band, Diane Silver and Changeling, over on tour from 
the States.  The programme is already quite full, so they will be providing 
an extended workshop and Contra dance from the end of the display ceilidh, 
running into the evening events.

The Friday night main event will be Stömp, called by Adam Hughes.  Stömp 
appear to be on top form at the moment, having recently reformed with a 
modified lineup, and they are looking forward to it immensely!

We have booked top local band Fendragon for the display ceilidh, with 
long-standing Cambridge caller Lizzie Dougherty.

We already have several workshops booked, mostly by those already booked as 
callers or band members.  For example, Stömp have kindly agreed to run the 
scratch band on the Sunday.

We have nominated one of our number to run the Morris tour -- she will be 
carefully taking notes during this year's tour!


Publicity

You will all see the flyer at IVFDF 2005, which will be distributed 
widely.  The website (www.ivfdf.ucam.org)  is already live and carries all 
the information in the flyer; it will be increased in scope over the coming 
months.  We have a publicity plan, including festivals to target with 
flyers, places for listings, local posters, press, etc. and a timetable for 
the above.

We have finalised the logo for the festival (not available in time for the 
2005 programme).  It adorns our flyers and preliminary yellow advertising 
T-shirts, which you should see us wearing.


Stewards

We have provided a number of the stewards for IVFDF 2005.  Hopefully this 
"dry run" will refresh our memories and help us do the best job possible in 
2006.


Organisation

IVFDF 2006 has had no shortage of people wanting to get involved -- when we 
started, we had a committee of 19 people!  This led us to split into seven 
overlapping subcommittees (events, facilities, finance, publicity, 
sponsorship, stewards, venues); plus chair, secretary, and treasurer (also 
chairing the finance subcommittee).  Since then the committee has shrunk to 
15 people.  The full committee meets twice a term, and the subcommittees as 
required.  We have a centrally agreed set of milestones linked to each of 
the full committee meetings, which so far we have mostly kept to.  There is 
also an explicit list of responsibilities for each of the subcommittees.

We had an internal website in 2001 which proved invaluable; this time round 
it has proven even more so.  There were about 100 files on its last time I 
checked, including minutes, documents, spreadsheets etc. generated over the 
course of the last year.

Our external advisors (Anne Wyatt and Seonaid Gent) have had full access to 
our internal website for most of the year.  Anne, our lead external 
advisor, is unable to be at IVFDF 2005 but her report to the reps meeting 
should follow shortly.


Other stuff

We have undertaken a full risk assessment, and identified actions to 
mitigate those risks.

We are mostly aware of how the new licensing regulations will affect us, 
although there are still some details to be worked out and we haven't yet 
decided whether to issue temporary event notices or to apply for a 
full-blown premises license.

We are properly constituted.

We are registered as a University Society and are therefore covered by the 
University's public liability insurance.

We are trying to determine what first aid provision we are legally required 
to have; we have quotes from local bodies for providing it if external 
provision is required.


Summary

Overall, we believe that we are in good shape to run the festival in 2006, 
having done much more at this stage than when we ran the festival in 2001 
and 1997.  We know what needs doing, and mostly how we're going to do it.

We would like to apply for £1000 underwriting to guarantee the success of 
the festival.

We look forward to seeing you all in Cambridge for IVFDF 2006.

The IVFDF 2006 committee.



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