This is a huge shortfall and I am not sure that the means of raising of funds justifies the ends - of continuing the festival in it's present form. Whether this is true or not, I firmly believe that what is needed are smaller more regional green gatherings around the country in the future. The very concept of a Big gathering is not green - with everyone coming on mass from all parts of the country to one place, and the pervasive tendency over recent years to have more conventional commercial activities in and around the festie - taken a step further this year with the Lost Vagueness set-up running on a generator (going against the festie rule of no-one running on generators - one rule for Lost Vagueness and another for everyone else).

Apart from the obvious increase in costs due to health and safety, another major issue with the running of the festival this year was the refusal of entry of some horsedrawn people onto the site because their names had already been crossed off the list. The problem resulted in the horsedrawn people going on strike for a few hours on the Friday of the festival; though there clearly were issues of both sides of this particular argument (the horsedrawn people were also pissed-off over what they perceived as double-standards regarding the Lost Vagueness generator), the fact that the horsedrawn representative continued to have to report to the site-office instead of one of the management team coming out to communicate with them speaks volumes about both the underappreciation of the main workers who keep this festival running and the breakdown in communication which some of the management team of the festival are chiefly responsible for. As usual, it seems to rely on one particular individual who seems to be in sole appreciation of the cultural sensitivities of the horsedrawn/traveller community to bridge these differences of intepretation about the relative status of their work at the festival. I could say that this incident speaks volumes about the cultural difference between horsedrawn people and those whose green credentials are more related to their affordability to have had such aspirations. Perhaps if a particular element of site-managers had more effectively communicated with this particular crew of workers, this problem would have been avoided in the first place.....

That said, the organisation of the festival is a huge undertaking, and I don't want to lambast the organisers too heavily, as they have pulled off a monumental feat in trying circumstances over the last few years. However, it does appear that Mendip District Council and certain local neighbours have it in for the BGG. however, in the final analysis, maybe in taking stock of this situation, we should be reconciled to accepting that large is not beautiful. Lets look at combining with people from the Northern Green, the Earthwise festival in Dorset (2005 and 2006) and people from within the climate camp to have a North, South, East and West festival in future. Surely there are enough groups that are set up around the country to provide entertainment facilities with marquees etc which could even mean the possibility of some of these regional festivities happening on the same dates could be feasible.

It's worth pointing out that this dire financial situation mirrors the situation fasted last year and the year before. The Big Green Gathering is not a for-profit event and hasn't even managed to cover it's cost for several year. It is not a free festival, it is not perfect, but it is a damn sight different from the vast majority of festivals and does a massive amount of good for progressive movements and campaigns.

Despite being run as a co-operative and involving a lot of activists and campaigns, indymedia UK admins saw fit to support the hiding of an article about the Big Green Gathering that had been posted to the newswire before this years event as they considered it to breech guidelines for being an advert promoting the event.

(before I continue, I should point out before the same admins choose to hide this, that my comment is not a complaint about their moderation (I wouldn't waste my time attempting to appeal to their judgment) but a direct addition of information relating to the article posted above)

Of course everyone knows that many 'adverts' are tolerated on the indymedia newswire - adverts for benefit gigs and the like for example. Many of those have 'suggested donations' on the door while others have a fixed price. In a minority of cases, all money goes to the advertised cause while in most cases the expenses of the bands and venue are paid out of the money raised.

Lets look at an example, the indymedia benefit at St' Georges squat a few years ago which raised over three thousand pounds towards a new server that has yet to materialise. In that case, the venue took over one thousand pounds plus the cafe and bar takings and various people got paid but indymedia promoted the event heavily as it was their 'emergency' fund raiser. But why how is adverts for this event different than those for the Big Green?

What exactly do the editorial guidelines say which makes one event advert okay and another not ok? Well, not a lot actually. Like most of the editorial guidelines (note 'guidelines' not 'rules'), it is widely open to interpretation being even more vague than the rest. It says that advertising is "posts with personal or product promotions", it doesn't even mention commerce, profit, or money at all yet the Big Green was written off as a commercial money making venture.

It's not just adverts for event raising money for indymedia that are allowed to be advertised on indymedia, there have been plenty of benefit gigs promoted which have raised money for the No Border Camp or the Climate Camp this year. Let's put aside the fact that some of those have been in commerical venues, pubs which obviously have a profit motive and healthy chunk of income from the sale of drinks during these events - more interesting is the fact that the bulk of the money for this years climate camp was raised at the Big Green Gathering and in fact many campaign groups, and associated projects such as Veggies, find the Big Green to be a very useful fund raising event every year.

But lets not dwell on the money, there is also the fact that the Big Green hosts numerous free workshops on a wide range of topics and that the informal networking that takes place during the festival helps to connect people from different campaigns and catalyze productive collaborations.

The lack of support from IMC-UK admins seems quite incredible and you have to wonder where exactly they are coming from in hiding promotion of an event which, for all it's faults, is an extremely important event in the activist diary, just like the Anarchist Bookfair for example.

The Climate Camp made more money than the BGG have in years.

Didn't indymedia supply a whole marquee and five days of workshops this year?

While no doubt the people in the horse drawn feel they have legitimate grievances it might be fair to point out that they were responsible for at least two cases of injuring people while tearing around the fields drunk in charge of a horse and cart and they generally don't pay a traders fee yet make a small fortune selling cider, beer, and whatever else people need.

Not sure what LOL is driving at, but I want to set the record straight on the climate camp.

Saying that the climate camp made more money than BGG has in years is not comparing like with like. I believe this year's camp was left with a small surplus. Obviously any event left with a surplus has 'made more money than BGG' but this means nothing - you might as well say the bit left over from EF Gathering for next year's seed funding means EF 'made more money than the BGG'

Climate camp was a free, donation based event, not in any way a commercial venture, and ran almost entirely on donations and fundraising events. Its overall turnover was not much more than 5% of that of the BGG. And it was run entirely by volunteers - no-one got paid for any work done on the camp. The leftover money will of course be going into future climate campaigning

I'm not criticising the BGG, just saying that comparing it with the climate camp in any way seems irrelevant - anyone suspecting the climate camp was some kind of secret money spinner has their head on backwards.

This is the article that was hidden:

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371956.html

This is the email about it being hidden:

 http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2007-May/0531-zv.html

There was one reply asking that it be unhidden:

 http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2007-May/0531-i3.html

It's a real shame that you choose not to argue about it on the list -- you would have got some support...

they want poor peoples money to help them throw poor people with the aid of the filth and council out of next years festival..fuck of..the majority of people and of ethics are sound but the fesival like nearly all others has been captured by the money men and friends...still made an ill man in pain laugh!!! well im of to forward the brighton council poll tax bill for a grand that was sent adressed to THE SQUATTERS 11 ect ect rd,,,,to those poor luvies at bgg ,,if you can track down the squatters you can have the bad debt! hey but if u find em dont throw em out a! yors unsincerly the big green money grab

del.

assuming you are talking about the 'be the media' tent in the campaigns field, i should point out that it was not provided by indymedia but supplied by the organiser of the campaigns field (one of the bgg directors i believe) along with about 3,000 pounds worth of tickets for people providing workshops. some of those workshops were done by indymedia people, who also looked after an infostall and sold dvd's as a fund raiser for indymedia.

it hardly constitutes an example of support of bgg by indymedia, more the other way round since indymedia walked away with hundreds of pounds raised without having to pay for a stall or even for tickets.

"This is a huge shortfall and I am not sure that the means of raising of funds justifies the ends - of continuing the festival in it's present form.", Mark (TLIO)

A huge shortfall? Let's see. For the sake of easy maths, let say the ticket price is 100 pounds and that of the 20,000 people licensed to take part in the event, half actually pay that amount. That's a cool two million pounds there, before trader fees. So the 75,000 pound shortfall is less than 4% of the annual turnover, certainly not a huge shortfall in that context.

To put it another way, just another 750 ticket buying participants out of the 20,000 plus people present, would have been enough to make the event break even while allowing campaigns like the Climate Camp, Indymedia, and The Land Is Ours to raise cash and spread information.

It's interesting that people seem to be attacking the BGG for a conflicting multitude of sins (bad management, money grabbing capitalism, nazi security etc) while ignoring the fact that it is the local authority and the police that add the 120,000 pound policing bill and insist that an additional quarter of a million or more be spent on private security, fences and patrols to keep unlicensed participants out of the festival.

whatever the criticisms I might have about the BGG, if they don't manage to raise the money, some of the people who will lose out will be the creditors, which I'd have thought would most likely be the little people like you and I, the people trying to provide eco right-on services etc. For them, it will have a big impact if they don't get paid.

Economist said:
"It's interesting that people seem to be attacking the BGG for a conflicting multitude of sins (bad management, money grabbing capitalism, nazi security etc) while ignoring the fact that it is the local authority and the police that add the 120,000 pound policing bill and insist that an additional quarter of a million or more be spent on private security, fences and patrols to keep unlicensed participants out of the festival."

Response:
Thanks for clarifying that. It is an even huger bill than i realised it was. That said, I hope the management are able to take on board constructive criticism. I was not suggesting the security was nazi, rather that there must have been some breakdown in communication between the gate, management and horsedrawn representative/s.
Question:
- What would these costs be for a scaled down festie? Would it be finacially viable? (ie assuming half the no of punters - around 10,000, at £120 each, making a revenue stream of £1, 200, 000).

Mark asked about scaled down event, wonder what would happen if you had "around 10,000, at £120 each, making a revenue stream of £1, 200, 000". But it doesn't work like that.

10,000 people includes a few thousand kids who (assuming anything is paid for their ticket at all) contribute less than 1/3 of the adult ticket price. Then you have all the people who are given free tickets as they are volunteering, performing, doing workshops or otherwise blagging in. For the campaigns field alone that's hundreds of people and over the whole site, it's probably several thousand people. On top of that you have those who have blagged and scammed their way in, often with the help of those with free tickets. These people still count towards the licensed maximum number of people on site.

So, if you have an event for 10,000 people you can probably only could on 50% of those to pay.

Smaller events require pretty much the same infrastructure as larger events. Sure you need a few less toilets but that won't effect the costs that much. Small events also mean less traders and therefore fewer pitch fees. Larger events typically generate more revenue for traders so can attract higher pitch fees.

It economies of scale and they don't just apply to crude money but also in many cases to environmental concerns. What would happen if you had say four of these green gatherings as regional gathering around the country? Do you think it would mean less travel? It wouldn't.

The people capable of supplying services to these events are limited. For example, festival eye andy and his marquees, sams sauna, veggies, paul mobbs energy beyond oil stall, the pedal powered washing machine laundry etc etc. Where ever you held region green gatherings, at present at least, these people would have to travel just like they do now, only more times and further. Additionally, the events would have to be held at different times so the punters might choose to attend one which is not the closest to them because it is more convenient to them in terms of time, or they may decide to attend more than one or even all of the regional events (many people already go to both the Big Green and the Northern Green).

Scaling down seems to do little to guarentee better environmental credentials and certainly does nothing to solve the financial difficulties being faced. The finanical problems require either that the cost of security and policing is reduced (stop the police demanding money with menacies), or that the number of people buying tickets goes up, either by reducing the number getting in for free or by increasing the maximum number at the festival.

The plea from the BGG states that their annual turn over is three quarters of a million pounds. Without accounting for traders fees or the extra revenue generated from parking fees, this means on average person provides just 37 pounds (assuming 20,000 people at the festival), or just 7,000 people paying the full ticket price.

It's not surprising BGG are in such financial trouble with so many people not paying.

There is a concession price of sixty five quid but I'm not sure how many of those are available.

I wonder what would happen if they reduced all the tickets to sixty five quid and tried harder to get more people to pay what would after all amount to a little over a tenner each day. if they could get the number of people not paying down to just 20% then a ticket price of 65 quid would bring in just over 1 million, ie. almost a quarter of a million more than their current turnover.

I'm sorry but I don't believe that anyone contributing anything to a festival is actually getting a free ticket, they are working for their ticket, and some crew work or contribute far more than the actual cost of the ticket itself (get rid of the crew, the performers, the workshop artists, the campaigners, the bands etc., and you'd have no festival).

Hmmm, you're not expecting crew to pay are you to compensate for your own poor management?

Hello All ,

I think the problem lies squarely with the police and council who are deliberately trying to price the BGG out of existence. The festival itself should not be changed , its great as it is , despite the various gripes that people have its still the best festival out there and an invaluable asset to the activists of the UK.

I think the BGG should not pay and should contest the amount charged and the absurd licencing
requirements. Maybe next year it should be done without a licence just to show the police and
council .

I can see that getting more ticket sales would be an answer but it just seems to wrong to me
to cave in to this and buy our way out. This is the kind of thing that destroyed glastonbury.

Toodle-pip
Amias