well, the financial panic has been on since before Christmas, but the first three festivals I've been to this year have been well attended - this despite the fact that indoor festivals can be more expensive to attend because of the additional accomodation costs. If this is meaning more people attending festivals locally, it doesn't seem to have affected the numbers. At Loughborough we increased capacity, and had a substantial increase on numbers compared to last year.

BTW, we got ACE funding, but it was for our education programme. I believe that's what Southwell got theirs for, too.