UK Festivals Online
the hub is currently working to develop UK Festivals Online (UKFO), an online ticketing and audience development resource for voluntary sector music festivals.
UKFO will provide an interactive one-stop shop for audiences, supplying up-to-date information about festivals, searchable by date, region, name and genre, plus secure online booking facilities.
UKFO will use data collected via its online ticket sales to map the size, demographics and attitudes of festival audiences nationally. It will develop a national festival audience database, providing individual festivals with a customer data/profiles, and the sector with evidence of its social and economic impact. To maximise festivals’ ability to use this data, and the impact it has, UKFO will provide relevant training and produce regular on and off-line reports detailing the sector’s impact.
Improving intelligence about festival audiences was a key recommendation of Folk Arts England’s Impact of Folk Festivals research project, which the hub managed on its behalf. The research identified that the UK’s 350 folk festivals generate £82 million annually through 350,000 attendances by 106,000 people. This echoes the British Arts Festivals Association’s 2002 Festivals Mean Business report, and East Midlands Arts’ 2003 Festivals and the Creative Region research, which demonstrated an £11m spend on festivals regionally. Festivals are significant contributors to regional economies with important audience and community development functions.
This is despite a limited infrastructure, both in terms of individual organisations and at a sectoral level. Most small-scale festivals are not-for-profit organisations, managed by volunteers, and receive little of no funding. UKFO aims to build festival audiences and help them to maximize their income.
See also
The Impact of Folk Festivals Research for the Association of Festival Organisers