The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #136939   Message #3142723
Posted By: GUEST,Blowz sans cookie
26-Apr-11 - 12:05 PM
Thread Name: Easter Maritime Festival
Subject: RE: Easter Maritime Festival
We went on the Saturday and had a good day - great to see so many old friends and the setting was more than a setting - it was very interesting in its own right.

Just a few bits of, hopefully, positive feedback for taking into consideration for next year (which hopefully there will be). I know that often there are different viewpoints on these things, but I chuck these in for consideration:

If using Porters Row and the Bigmore vessel again, try and arrange for some additional seats to be provided? There was only half a doz or so at Porters Row and, apart from not being enough, it makes the 'venue' look as if there's not really much there to be attracted to. Remember that the museum is full of people who have no idea of who the performers are and so won't know whether they are worth seeing or not. Also, that the age range of visitors will likely include quite a few people who'd welcome a sit.

Would it be poss to expand the programme a bit, so it gives more info than just names of performers and times / venues? As above, lots of the people at the museum would not know who the performers were, so the prog needs to give a bit more detail to draw them in and appeal to those who may never have heard of a shanty or a forebitter (or a concertina, for that matter!) Also, watch out for tying in the 'names' you use for the venues, with those on the museum's site map. We struggled a bit at first, trying to find where things were cos the description didn't match the locations in the map.

I know that, on the Saturday night concert, a singaround was begun in the adjacent bar. Whilst this didn't impact on the concert to any great degree, it did make the whole top floor a bit of a no-go area, in terms of finding somewhere for a drink and a chat. Not sure what the options might be on that one.

All in all we had a cracking day - although one of my party, who is a diabetic vegetarian struggled a bit to find something he could eat.

Hope that some funding can be agreed for next year - these things do need a proper budget if they are to grow and meet whatever targets success is measured by. The museum is a cracking base but will have a range of boxes it needs to tick, I imagine.