January... hmm... so here's some other things to think about

First step:
advert:
this year's Fringe Open Meeting
Wednesday January 30th
8pm in The Love Lounge at the back of The Bell, Walcot Street, Bath

Have you got a show you want to put on in Fringe 2008?
Would you like to help other people with the practical side of arranging, running and publicising events?
Do you want to know more about how the Fringe Festival works?
Do you want the inside story on what we’re planning for 2008?

...then this is the meeting for you. See you there. If you can’t be there but would like to be involved in any of the above capacities, EMail us on admin@bathfringe.co.uk.
There will be further volunteer meetings nearer to festival time, but if you’re contemplating a show, now is the time to be thinking seriously about it: the programme deadline will be March 3rd.

If you‘ve got a show, or even just an idea and a group of people to do it, we can provide some practical help including a list of venues for hire: please note that the Fringe doesn’t run any suitable venues itself (or we don’t at the moment, plans are afoot for future years). You might even find that someone else is planning something you can share resources with. We’ve also got a lot of experience and contacts in running events of all sorts and we are a good source of advice and information – if we haven’t tried something of the sort ourselves, it’s more than likely we know someone who has... And this meeting is definitely for you, it’s good to talk, as someone said (but that was an advert).

One of our best events of last year (Kilter’s ‘Remote Patrol’ in the Abbey Cemetery) first introduced themselves at last year’s open meeting: we’re looking forward to something (or things) else just as good this year.

Fringe Festival time is one part of the year where there are audiences, journalists, websites, media and the whole of the rest of the world looking at Bath to see what the city’s artistic community is up to: it’s the perfect time to get noticed... If you’re tempted, act now!

If you want to be involved with FAB Fringe Visual Arts this is not the meeting: see www.fringeartsbath.co.uk and note that the first and most crucial deadlines are January 16th.
If you want us to put your band on this is not the meeting either: see www.bathfringe.co.uk/page.php?pageid=71 and note that most music is put on by Fringe participating venues, not the Fringe committee.
There are no details about the possible Walcot Nation/Independence Day event at the moment.


now the rest of it

The beginning of the year is the classic cue to tell you where we’re at in preparing for next year’s festival. Yes of course that’s what everyone else is doing; sorry. We tend to spend most of the year ‘living in the future’ (planning the next festival, not as exciting as it sounds), now it’s your turn

Spiegeltent:
probably!
We think we’ve got the money, between commercial sponsorship and other independent funding. The council might give us some ££ to help the daytime shows connect with more Bath communities (a nice idea), but that’s small change compared with the five figure sums we need to open the place (and that’s before paying any artists). Anyone else wanting to support Bath’s most prestigious venue, get in touch, it’s not too late!We hear that Komedia aren’t opening until much later in the year, so that gives us another good crack at the music-and-comedy mix that we’ve done in the tent before, it’ll be fun. Because we haven’t 100% confirmed the venue we haven’t been able to book anything definitively yet, tho’ we do have some ‘heavy pencils’ on stuff we thought too good to pass us by. Who said “no heavy pencilling”?

bedlam:
Something will happen, of course...
...But mostly we’re waiting on the outcome of an Arts Council application which will allow us to set up a collaboration between some local performers and the fearless street provocateurs Cacahuète (remember their ‘Mama’s Funeral’ procession at Walcot Nation Day years ago?) as well as put on something extremely good looking in SawClose one evening. Some of the friends and supporters who helped with last year’s event there (the Gascoyne Place boys and some nice people in the Theatre Royal) are up for it again, and someone maybe even had a sniff of some money ... We set that event up with the idea that it should be continuing and could be in part supported by the people round there who stand most chance of benefiting, and so far this seems to be what’s happening.
If you read the arts pages, you’ll be aware that lots of organisations are losing ‘their’ Arts Council grants; this of course means that nobody can be certain of support from that direction, but the money we were applying for wasn’t part of that ‘pot’, and we’re still optimistic. We’d have to be, we wouldn’t still be doing this if we weren’t very optimistic...
There are also grant applications pending and in process for other outdoor & site-specific performances.

Kensington Meadows:
Again, if we get the money!
We’re hoping to make Kensington a second ‘pole’ of the festival for the last week/weekend, after bedlam (and after the Spiegeltent has closed). Depending on the same Arts Council grant, and, even then, depending if we can afford them (it’s looking more expensive than we originally thought), we’re hoping to get No Fit State Circus back, with their first all-new show in several years. Bath Fringe’s association with No Fit goes back years to when GB ‘New Circus’ was the new thing, and, frankly, they’re the only people in Britain still doing it at all consistently and still taking it forward - the other subsidised tented companies really haven’t proved themselves, to put it mildly. We think their new show will be sufficiently different to bring in people who like conventional circus along with people who like an edgy performance experience, and we hope to use this precedent to establish a regular audience for some of the stranger tent-able (that’s not like tentative) or outdoor shows that we see in Europe in the future, groups and acts we know you people would like, but we haven’t had a place to put them before.

If we get that money we can also use some of the same infrastructure (tents, toilets, power, fences) as the core for a community festival afternoon down there, to connect up some of the energies what went into past Walcot Independence events with some of the ‘community’ angles and youth projects we’ve been doing over the last few years. Whether it comes out as an event like Walcot Independence Day or not (it’s going to be different, it’s going have to have a set gate charge on it this year, for a start) isn’t really our decision, it depends who wants to get involved, and that’s something for the Walcot Independence massive to talk about when we know if the money has come through - and if it doesn’t, whether anyone has any other ideas. Someone is supposed to be setting up another forum for that, if you want to be involved and informed, go to http://www.bathfringe.co.uk/page.php?pageid=41 where there’s more info and a sign-up section.

Outside of all that, we are hoping to drum up more enthusiasm for more theatrical performances in more places (halls, pubs, schools) - other festivals can make it happen, and Bath has many more rooms that could be used than currently are - tho’ this one may turn out to be more of a long-term plan than something that’s going to come upon us suddenly in 2008.
...ideas?

The FAB Fringe Visual Arts group have the usual slew of good new ideas (cutprice but not sellout or cheapskate) for 2008, but that’s their story to tell you - have a look at http://www.fringeartsbath.co.uk

And of course there’s the ‘other’ festival, ‘The Bath Festival’ to most of us, whose grant process doesn’t come in synchronised with everyone else’s, so we won’t be able to see how well they’ve kept up their council (and Arts Council etc., etc.) support in comparison. One thing you will notice if you get information from both organisations is that Bath Festival have decided to move their dates to the same ones as ours - we moved ours a week out-of-sync about a decade ago, giving Bath a three-week festival and the audience the opportunity to go to events in both. When Bath Festival’s budgets, grants and turnover dwarf ours something like tenfold (haven’t done the sums recently), we’re worried about this, of course; we can’t help feeling we’re going to lose out. Some accuse us of being paranoid, but when you’re small, you have to look out for yourself, no-one else is going to. Keep an eye on this site and our website for trailers of what we’ve got on, and don’t go buying into too many from the other team until you see what we’ve got to offer, or you may end up missing something you’ll regret...

if you want to help us, comment or otherwise pass this around your online friends
that way we get more people noticing we’re here
thanks