“Top Up Your Ticket” by an amount you can afford. With rising production costs, your ticket price should have been 15% higher.
It’s been a bumpy ride these last few years and we’re not out of the woods yet. Creating and building a festival like Towersey is hard work and increasingly expensive. Many of you have probably experienced other events you love, having to cancel or restructure their funding to survive.
Things like crowdfunding a dance floor or selling to commercial investors to keep an event alive. Some have gone and may never come back. And some will not be back in 2024.
But Towersey is more than just a festival and a job for us. We run it with a tiny team as a not-for-profit organisation. Towersey Festival is our history, or heritage and our privilege, so we can’t (and we won’t) let it go – and we know many of you feel the same way.
Coming out of the pandemic has been tough (for everyone) and we are really proud of the festival we created in 2022 after two years of cancelled events.
Your feedback made all the hard work worthwhile and gave us the boost we needed to get on and plan this year… when the bank balance was not experiencing a boost.
Costs have spiralled, partners and sponsors are less able to support us and inflation has hit hard… harder than we could have predicted.
It is now becoming apparent that the income is just not going to meet the expenditure for this year. It is important that you know, we have tried and implemented everything we can to save money and make adjustments without jeopardising your festival experience. We have taken personal salary cuts of over 30% and we have received massive support from many of our suppliers and key staff to make the 2023 festival possible.
We also acknowledge that we would not be here without the support of our audience (you) over the pandemic years – a humbling experience given the challenges for everyone through COVID.
The world has changed and the way we need to run the festival needs to if we want to survive for another 60 years… which we do!
We are in the process of massively remodelling the business so that we don’t have to remodel the festival and we're becoming a Community Interest Company to reflect what the festival is all about.
To get us to this next stage in the Towersey journey we need to get through this year and the only option we have left is to ask you, our loyal and forever supportive audience, to help us bridge this gap.
Inflation has outweighed any ticket price increase we could have forecast 18 months ago (when we set ticket prices). Back then, we really wanted to try to keep prices as low as possible. In reality, our tickets should have increased by at least another 10% and probably more like 20% to cover the spiralling costs.
If you are in a position to, we have set up this Crowdfunder so you can
“Top Up Your Ticket”
Top up by the amount of your choice. Showing your support in this way will help us to pay for some of the inflation increases we have had to absorb and ensure we can continue way into an exciting new future.
So, if you feel you can “top up your ticket” and help balance the budget then here’s where you can.
We really don’t like asking for contributions for what seems like nothing in return, but we will find a way to show our appreciation. Not only through the continuation of your Towersey but with extra treats as soon as is possible.
The other way you can support the future and get some extra festival treats this year is by joining the Fellowship. Have a look at our info about that – we think it’s going to be a brilliant intimate community of Towersey fans that work with us going forward and become more closely involved in the event.
Joe, Mary and all the Team
This project successfully funded on 18th September 2023