Happy New Year!
A group of promoters comprised of BeeDee Productions, Medway Eyes, Motherboy, Suburban Kings and TEA have been looking at the possibility of putting on a fringe festival of Medway music in 2013, structured such that it doesn’t necessarily revolve around a single main event and can be co-operatively run.
To that end, we (the five promoters named above – let’s call it ‘the umbrella group’ for now) have agreed in principle to stage a fringe festival on (and hopefully around) Saturday 13th July 2013, led by independent artists and promoters. We’ll be putting our heads together shortly to give it a name and an identity, and to clarify our vision and the way in which we will engage with artists, venues and technicians. We’ll be talking to some of those people to help us define a way of operating that everyone involved can understand, agree on and feel comfortable with. Once we’ve established all of that, we’ll set up a web presence so that anyone wishing to participate and help us to broaden activities can get in touch. Crucially, any person or entity wishing to participate, however big or small, will understand and engage with the vision.
Medway Council is reported to be planning to organise or enable a music festival in Medway in 2013, and there has been much discussion about this in the social media. We are open minded as to if and how our festival might potentially become linked with other concurrent events and activites, or whether it could have council involvement or support. Ultimately our festival will be able to exist independently and remain under our control.
The focal point would be the music/gig element, taking place in a series of venues on a single day (possibly two days).
It will not be organised and managed on a top-down basis, but will emerge from a variety of people and organisations working together, creating and managing their own events. However, the umbrella group will;
– agree on a festival name, identity, operating principles and design of promotional materials,
– coordinate effort (e.g. so we’re not trying to book the same bands),
– communicate with external entities as a single voice.
The concept is to build this from the bottom up. We start with the easy bit, booking a handful of pubs and venues for the day. We are thinking early afternoon starts. This is the core, the very least that will happen. Then we can build it up from there. For example; warm-up or come-down gigs could feature on the days before or after the main event. Non-music art events could take place through out the week and on the day.
We’ll keep you posted. You can subscribe to this blog or follow Medway Eyes on Facebook or Twitter for now . We’re not leading the umbrella group, it’s just that someone had to make the first post so we volunteered.
We’ll keep you posted. Feel free to let us know what you think.
Medway Eyes 