The Frome Festival 2009 lived up to expectations. We were delighted with the quality of the performances, exhibitions, walks, talks, workshops, and more, that made up the 187 programmed events.
At this stage, we are still calculating box office returns, but it seems that the policy of keeping ticket prices down, resulted in an increase in sales on last year, making it perhaps the best attended festival yet. Many tickets were sold at £5.00 or less. We cannot include free events in our statistics, but those who attended the World Food Feast will acknowledge 2-3000 in attendance. Pubs offering free entertainment were regularly crowded too. The Cheese and Grain Hall alone hosted more than 5,200 paying customers in festival week.
Of course, we needed to sell more tickets at modest rates to insure a good financial return. I am happy to say that, at this stage, it is possible that we have made a small surplus this year, thus ensuring that we can celebrate the Frome Festival’s tenth anniversary in 2010. Huge thanks must go to our sponsors, who have contributed materially, and in kind, to make this happen. It is difficult to single out individual sponsors, but it is appropriate to express our enormous gratitude to Denton’s Directories for their assistance with the development of this website at a substantially reduced charge. We are also delighted to have renewed our association with Butler, Tanner and Dennis, who printed 20,000 copies of the festival brochure entirely free of charge. As ever, the ongoing support of Eye-Tech, who supply our office space and computer systems, is vital to the survival of the Festival.
The Frome Festival operates in a similar way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, in that the ideas and promotions come to us from various sources. For example, the Merlin Theatre and Rook Lane Arts organise much their own programme of performances and exhibitions within the festival’s remit. The Literature elements, the Home project, and the Theatre in the Villages were all successful and largely self contained aspects to the festival. The Cheese and Grain Hall, hosts some events in festival week presented by commercial promoters, who pay a contribution to the festival’s overheads. Many events are run by private individuals or organisations, often underwriting the financial risks themselves.
In addition to the above, the Frome Festival actively promotes many of the main events each year, financially underwriting large scale concerts and performances. The risk factor here is very high. One concert alone might demand a financial underwrite equivalent to most of the public subsidy received for the year. It was, therefore, a delight and relief to see the terrific response to our events at the Cheese and Grain like Imelda May; Still Black Still Proud; and Adrian Edmondson’s Bad Shepherds.
Most festivals expect to have to direct significant funding to their classical music programme. Thanks to the carefully weighed options presented to us by our Classical Music co-ordinator Jason Thornton, we were able to present a diverse and well attended series of concerts, which largely paid their own way.
It was also good to see well supported events at the Masonic Hall, which has become something of a festival club this year and last. Thanks go to Will Angeloro for programming most of the events there as well as being our main supplier own sound equipment and expertise.
The Frome Festival 2009 was captured in all its glory by members of the Frome Wessex Camera Club. Many of the marvellous photos can be accessed by following this link:
Full details of the 2009 festival can still be found by accessing the link shown under the “Previous Festival Websites” heading in the right hand column.
Next year the Frome Festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary from the 9th to the 18th July, allowing a discreet period of mourning after England’s inevitable elimination from the World Cup, before we begin the celebrations!
