Obviously, cost plays a big part in the success or failure of festivals. I've already put here some of the comments I received from Chris Wade after last year's (2007) festival. Here are some more:

"Over the 25 years of running the festival there has been the need to make many changes due to various pressures imposed on us - loss of venues; increasing costs - Artists fees; venue hire costs, increasing pressure imposed by the ever expanding H & S issues, Insurance; License fees; plus the costs of extra marketing due to greater competition from other events etc. When the festival was first staged, we were the only festival on our weekend - now there are 2 other major festivals - both with similar artistic programmes. No doubt numerous smaller festivals exist that I do not know about. Also - this year we had increasing competition from another festival that took place on Beverley Racecourse on the Saturday of our festival. This, whilst possibly catering for a different audience, competed with us for media coverage. So you can see that life never gets easier - and this year has probably been the hardest yet in terms of the organizing of the event. It has been totally exhausting for all concerned. Up until 2 weeks ago, ticket sales were low and a great deal of extra effort took place to build up to the figures we eventually reached. We only have one paid administrator (this year - Cally Barker) and the rest we rely on voluntary help - so there is a massive amount of work and co-ordination that goes on.

The ultimate aim is to produce a festival that is successful in terms of an event for our audiences, but also to break even financially (as we cannot afford to subsidise it ourselves), and if possible to ideally earn sufficient money to put back a little as a reserve for future festivals."


Out of interest, I've just done a quick comparison of what various local festivals would cost us (2 adults, 1 child, plus camping):

Pickering (top name acts plus a wide variety of other excellent performers on greenfield site) - £150.

Beverley (top name folk acts, excellent range of performers but no big names outside the folk world) - £180.

Saltburn (good range of 'folkies' but not top names) - £132


Well, yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choice of what you think is good value.