2 days until the Box Office opens

We’re busy beavering away getting ready for the box office opening on Thursday. Its already been open for a week or so for patrons and star patrons for their priority booking (one of the perks of becoming a patron and supporting the festival… only £20!) and things have been busy. Unfortunately we have not been able to sell tickets for I’m Sorry I Havent A Clue in advance to patrons, which is a shame – so there will no doubt be a rush on Thursday.
We have decided to close the box office for telephone and in person bookings on Friday because of a certain wedding, although booking can still be done online. There’s going to be a big street party in Grassington so it would be difficult to get to the office anyway, between the children’s tea party and the old tyme dancing!
Reports back thus far are that the programme is proving very popular and also so are the event guides – we are having problems keeping up with the demand for them in tourist centres and hotels across Yorkshire. So if you’d like a guide and cant find one anywhere do let us know!

Nearly there

The programme for this years festival is now nearly complete – just a couple of things to do and then we are set!
We’ve the launch party for our patrons and sponsors on the 21st (next Monday) so its definitely got to be ready for then and we’re going to press with our highlights leaflet tomorrow – all exciting stuff.
So now with the blue skies outside and Spring in the air it making the festival not seem so far away …and we cant wait to reveal all …

Blooming Marvellous for 2011

Well its all kicking off in Grassington as we await with baited breath the Channel 4 reality TV programme filmed here last year (due to air on March 3)- who’s going to win the house? Of course theres plenty of controversial local opinion on the programme – why wouldn’t there be in a place like this where everyone has opinions and isnt scared to voice them But we’re looking forward to see how it pans out. Are we going to encourage people to come and visit Grassington to see what we are really like if they portray us in a bad light or are we going to be turning the hordes away because it looks so fab…. we’ll just have to wait and see!
Plans for the fest are well underway and we’ll be launching the programme on March 21 to our Patrons and sponsors … want to become a sponsor – only £20 and you’ll be supporting one of the best rural arts charities in the dales. Go for it!!!
So the 2011 blogging has started.. keep a look out as more blogs are on the way…

Under a week to go

Goodness how the last few weeks have flown by, its been so busy I havent even had time to blog!
So much has happened….
We’ve probably broken the world bunting record..just waiting for verification when it goes up on Tuesday, its naughty to single anyone out when so many people made so much bunting – but thanks must go to Lindsey at the Yorkshire Lass – who really got things going in the village.
The Fleeces Fairies and Folklore work of art will be constructed today – look out for mad people on Elbolton carrying fleeces around!
The Festival chorus have only got one more rehearsal and are sounding fabulous.
The Tech team have had their last full programme meeting and are all raraing to go
The piano’s ordered to arrive on Friday the hall is booked from Monday…
Bryony’s moving in to Grassington to sort out the Carnival and the Visual Arts..

So really…we’re off!!!!
Exciting times

3 weeks until opening night

Well, three weeks to go and things are getting mega busy here – typical that the weather is grogeous and sunny just when I’m having to spend all day locked to my computer! Although its great to see the sunshine, in a way I want it to rain soon so that we’re more likely to have a nice hot dry spell during the festival! It just makes everything so much nicer, especially the outdoor events.
Jane, our lovely artist liason officer is definitely willing sunshine to come – on the night of the last night of the proms she is going to have 100 plus artists to look after – what with the choir and the orchestra, so if its rainy its going to be a bit of a squash in the green room during the interval!!

Bryony has been on radio Leeds this morning discussing the world record bunting attempt and hopefully Look North are coming up to preview it next week at a Bunting Party at the Yorkshire Lass. There’s every chance we could beat the record with flags coming in thick and fast, so please if you read this – do keep on cutting out those triangles! I’m having a recce round the village this morning to try and figure out where we should hang it from. Lots of discussion over this!!
Also we now have an extra date for the lunch and cookery demo at The Angel – the first one sold out in minutes would you believe (yes, I would – it’ll be fab) so we have added another date on the 23rd June.
Thats all for now.. .got to get back to the laptop…. the garden will have to wait until July!!

Last few weeks….

It was the final festival meeting last night – chacking we havent forgotten anything and making sure everything is in place. As usual quite a few laughs although not as many as at the last meeting during the wine tasting!

Helen and Sarah had a bunting competition during the meeting – two very different methods – Helen managed 150 by the end of the meeting. Much discussion about how we were going to manage actually getting the bunting up. I had to finally curb my control freak instincts and agree that we’d put it up on the Tuesday before the festival when I couldnt be there!! how on earth am I going to cope with that? The answer is I probably wont – I wont be able to resist nipping out of the last Festival Chorus rehearsal to see whats going on!

Anyway we all left the meeting on a high and very excited about all thats going on this year – it should be fun fun fun!!!!

See you there!

Roll Up Roll up!

The box office opened this week on Monday (last Friday online), this is always a nreve wracking time – will people like this years programme and want to come to the events we’ve so carefully planned. Scary! Well it seems they do, some events always sell more quickly than others and this year it seems Fascinating Aida and Ross Noble are the runaways, although the lunch and cookery demonstration sold out straightaway.
The Grassington Festival crowd must be a hungry bunch who enjoy a good laugh!
Gill is now running the box office like a well-oiled machine and all is calm and unhurried, with everyone knowing exactly what to do and when to do it. We rely on a small volunteer army to help man the phone, do the filing and post off tickets, so a big thanks to those who have been willing to give up their time to help. And thanks to Claire Gains for bringing in biscuits and chocolates to keep up the spirits!
Its still worth booking in good time for your festival events as things are selling well, so we look forward to hearing from you and if you have any questions there’s always someone on the end of the phone who can help (or who knows a someone who can!)

Black Voices Project

We had our second rehearsal last night for the Black Voices performance. The Festival Chorus is now about 50 strong, made up of local people – some of whom, like me, haven’t sung in public since they were in the school choir. So far the project has surpassed my expectations. Even by the end of the first rehearsal we did sound quite good (if I say so myself) and last night there was one piece which just  made the hairs stand up on the back of your neck – incredible for a bunch of rank amateurs!

Celia and Carol are brilliant, very patient and you can just tell by the look on Carol’s face whether it sounds good or bad, like Andrew Lloyd Webber on the west end reality show auditions! Celia on the other hand can hide her feelings a bit better, although even she can’t help wincing when we first start practising and it sounds like a car crash! One of them said last night, don’t look so worried,  you’ve got the right notes … it was very tempting to add the Morecambe and Wise line of …but not necessarily in the right order!!! However its just bizarre that then 20 minutes later it starts to sound good and then give us a bit longer and it almost sounds professional.

There was one wonderful African song last night, which had such a super bass line that you just wanted to let them get on with it and listen. We could still do with a few more men though – even though the ones we have are excellent!!!

Thanks Black Voices for making this so magical

Off to the Printers

The full colour brochure is now finally ready after many many proof reading sessions – bizarrely no matter how many times you read through something, each time you spot a different error! And the great proof reading team of Angela, Hanneke, Claire and Gill each spotted different mistakes every time too! Weird!

However the brochure is finally ready, the proofs have been approved and it is off to the printer now, hopefully back by the end of this week and will be mailed and distributed next week.

This year we have tried a new strategy with our print, 30,000 small leaflets (A4 tri fold) have been distributed around Yorkshire and Lancashire, then 20,000 full event guides (36 pages) will be sent to the mailing list, delivered to all households in the very local area and distributed in the local region. So we shall see whether we reach any new audiences – its such a shame when people who dont live too far away from Grassington – say in Knaresborough or somewhere –  say that they have never heard of the Festival or have only come across it by accident!

So big thanks (again) to our lovely friends at Absolute 2 Design in Skipton for bearing with us once more!

The brochures look absolutely fantastic – really colourful, which is perfect for the 30th birthday party feel for 2010. Hopefully everyone will enjoy reading them. I’ll try and upload a pic of the front cover on here – but that may be testing my technical ability!!!

From Glamorous New Website to Cleaning the Loos

Another excitement this week when our new-look website went live. We’re absolutely delighted with it, so big thanks go from everyone at the festival to the lovely boys at the webdesigners QDK – thanks especially to Matt and John (I think they worked most on the site, hope I havent missed anyone out!)

QDK www.qdk.co.uk  are our main sponsors of our Last Night Party and have been for a good few years now – so they’ll be getting lots of drinks on us to say thank you for the superb job they’ve done. Qdk also run the internet news site for the Yorkshire Dales www.daelnet.co.uk where you can catch up on all the latest gossip and news for this part of the world.

There’s lots of extra info on this years site www.grassington-festival.org.uk and we hope that everyone finds it easy to use.

We’re still at it getting the info out there and hopefully the full brochure will be ready next week, with some of the smaller leaflets out and about already. Its just a shame the box office cant open yet, but we would be just asking too much of our volunteers to open it for longer than we already do. Its something we’re going to look into for next year though.

Marquee Subcommittee meeting tomorrow night, lots of health and safety stuff to plough through, generators, pit barriers, fire extinguishers, loos (and the dreaded men only “pissoirs” – thats their official title apparently!), organising who is going to have to clean the national parks loos (we all have to take turns with that delightful job!), ice cream, hog roast, how we’re going to manage the 42 strong orchestra and 60 strong choir backstage for the last night of the proms if its raining etc etc.  So there’ll be plenty to discuss. One of the great things is that Google Earth have kindly taken a photo of the festival field in full swing for us to refer too – very handy!

Only 75 days to go…….