From: GUEST
Date: 03 May 11 - 02:24 PM
Re the storytellers Association, if you contact The Trad Arts Team, Birmingham, they have a very good web site, think it's www.traditionalartsteam.co.uk or might just be tradarts.co.uk you'll get all the info. I'm sure they do a lot more than I'm aware of. But one very good aspect that I think could be easily adapet to all Folk performers and clubs.
If for instance you had 50 clubs in an association dotted round the UK a performer from abroad, or the UK wanting to travel round doing some gigs. Normally they'd need to contact individual clubs hoping for individual bookings, time consuming and expensive if they get one booking down south on a Monday and back up north next night. With the association he could contact one number, if his/her fee was normall say £200 the association could offer something like bookings at 10 of their clubs within reasonable distance of each other, for a reduced fee of £150, they could even, as the Storytellers org does, arrange support acts if needed at each club, Performer gets 10 bookings when beforehand he might only have got 5 or 6, no long travel between gigs, and clubs who might have not been able to afford booked artists now may be able to, everybody wins, clubs, performers and audience.

It works very well in other areas like the rock circuit and the comedy scene. Folk performers really struggle to make a living when with a more professional appoach like this the scene could benefit greatly I feel