funding a free festival

The Committee is very proud of the Upton Blues Festival, the way it brings many 1000’s of visitors to the town, the way many shops and pubs have their best weekend of the year, and the fun and joy it brings to our streets. But we are aware that there are many misconceptions as to how the festival is funded – and we need your help!

The festival is completely self funding and costs the committee around £50,000 a year to put on. But nothing is free and without your help to put money into the festival coffers it could not continue.

We need all you lovely people who come to the festival to do three things;

• To camp in the official camping site or park in the official parking
• To buy beer from the two official bars
• To buy a programme and maybe a wristband or a t-shirt, and
• To support the town businesses that advertise in the programme

So please don’t camp on the unofficial site (which has no facilities on site), please don’t camp or park on the roadside to save a few quid, and please spend your money in the shops and pubs that advertise in the programme and display the ‘I’m Backing Upton Blues 2012’ sign in their window.

You know you’re going to have a great weekend and what fabulous value for money it is, so make sure that what you spend over the weekend goes to support the participating organisations and not to the many opportunists who don’t contribute.

We also need the support of the businesses of Upton that benefit most from the existence of the festival – independent estimates put the revenue the festival generates for the town at over £300,000. Please advertise in the programme, make a contribution to our efforts and share some of the profits that we bring to your business with the festival. We create the busiest weekend of the year for the town, attract many thousands of people but it costs £50,000 to put on which we need to generate from somewhere – so please make a fair contribution!

This is where the money to fund the festival comes from

With all the performances (over 100 over the weekend) free to enter the festival is funded primarily by the people camping on the official site, the sale of beer from our festival bar, the sale of of programmes, wristbands, T-shirts etc, the contributions from the stallholders and a small amount of  fundraising, sponsorship and advertising from some fab private individuals, local businesses and Malvern Hills District Council.

Each of the participating pubs pays for all its own bands and the participating pubs all buy for a half page advert in the programme – this is the only contribution made by the pubs or their breweries to the cost of putting on the festival.

This is how the money gets spent

The Volunteer Committee funds the two main stages and the acoustic stage. This covers all the bands, the PA and building the stages themselves. It pays for all the security in town and also the camping site, including the hire of the field, toilets, hot showers, security and facilities. We fund the marketing costs and all the ‘behind the scenes stuff’ that is necessary from lighting to rubbish clearance, admin to signposting.