Page 5 - Phonebox Magazine December 2010

HAVE YOUR SAY
Letters
Dear Editor
I would like to take the opportunity of responding to Jean Lewis and her comments about the Dickens of a Christmas Craft Fayres which you carried in the November Phonebox. Her interest in giving us feedback about our event is very welcome and much appreciated and I think she, and your other readers may be interested to learn a bit more about the Craft Fayre and some of the issues we face in organising it.
This element of the day is organised by the local Lions club and is a major undertaking which stretches the small group of men and women who make up Newport Pagnell & Olney Lions Club to the limit.
Being organized on a totally voluntary basis and competing for time along with our home life and work commitments (not to mention many other Lions activities) means that we are unable to market the event in the same way as many of the other large professionally run and promoted craft fayres which she may be more familiar with.
We, consequently, rely on ‘repeat’ exhibitors but not at the expense of allowing the event to become stale and we actively manage our applications to ensure a percentage of new faces come into the show each year. The Craft Fayre circuit is close knit and the fame of our event is such that we rarely need to look for new faces as they find us. This year, for example, we have 25 new stalls and an additional 10 unsuccessful applicants who will be on our list for next year. The nature of hand crafting is such, however, that the regular visitor to our event may consider things appear the same from one year to the other but I can assure you that this is not the case.
By rigidly enforcing our first come, first served, booking system new faces are virtually assured and with a mailing list of over 300 which is purged each year to ensure currency, we fill our 80 stalls fairly quickly. Late applicants will go onto a waiting list (to fill any cancellations) and
if not already on our mailing list, will be invited to apply for the following year’s event. These actions and the fact that we now have an annual attendance well in excess of 3000 people gives us the confidence that despite being a bunch of amateurs, we appear to be providing an event which people, whether crafters or public, are keen to attend.
Whilst accepting that there are undoubtedly some quite outstanding craftpeople around, it must be remembered that many of them are full time craftspeople operating professional businesses. To take one day out at Olney at a weekend is not considered viable for many, especially if long distance travel is involved. Give them an event lasting a full weekend, in an historic property, run by one of the professional companies charging around £500 per stall and with a customer base of 25,000+ visitors paying £5 admission and they would come. We are just not in that league, I am afraid.
May I finish with an appeal to Jenny. I presume you visit craft fayres throughout the year so would ask you to speak to any of the craftspeople who carry the type of craft which you feel would fit into the Dickens event. If they show an interest in our one day show, give them our website address www.olneylionsclub.org and ask them to contact me. Alternatively, if you obtain their information and pass this onto me, I would do my best to attract them along to Olney next year whilst keeping you informed.
Better still, why not become a friend of Lions and help us in this and many of the other activities we are involved with. What we need is continued support and help with ideas and time. Given these two key elements, we might just ensure that we maintain a high quality event to help Lions continue to support those in the Communities we serve. That is, of course, the real reason we run the Craft Fayre and will hope to do so for many years to come. Visit our website if you would like to see what we do with the admission fees from this and our many other fundraising initiatives. This is the same place to go if you wish to contact us for any other reason.
John Ferris
President, Newport Pagnell & Olney Lions
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Phonebox Magazine 5
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