Since the mid 1990’s Newcastle’s Green Festival has been an almost annual event hosting a range of activities from: Live music from local bands and musicians; a Wellbeing Area; Cycling Area; Kids Area and Children’s Parade; Traditional Crafts Area; as well as circus performers, drumming groups, etc.
However, in 2015 we were unable to host the event due to a lack of funds. Despite starting fundraising much earlier this year and submitting even more applications, festival organisers are as yet unable to say if the festival will go ahead this year.
Gerard New, one of the festival’s organisers said “we’ve set a deadline of the 1st May to make a decision on whether we think the Festival is feasible or not and at the moment things are not looking good, but we remain hopeful that our efforts will come through”
Funding applications
We have submitted applications for almost £17,000 so far and are still applying. Whilst one of these, for £2,000, has been already been rejected we need around 60% of the remaining applications to be successful for the festival to be deemed feasible.
Sponsorship
We’d love one big sponsor to support the festival, however, this is an unlikely outcome this year. However, we’d love small local organisations or individuals to get involved and support the event by sponsoring small parts of the festival. This could be as little as 10metres of fencing (app £50), a port-a-loo (app £100), a marquee (£500 – £1,000) or even a whole area (Wellbeing Area – £1,500, Kids Area – £2,500, Main Stage – £4,500).
We’d love groups of people to come together and fund a part of the festival, we’d even name it for them. Their own Port-a-loo, Marquee or Stage?
Underwriting the Festival
We’re doing all we can to generate our own funding, but we’re struggling to find it all before we need to make the call on 1st May. We need people or organisations to underwrite the festival or even part of it and allow us the extra time we need to generate the extra cash needed. We may need a few thousand pounds or we may just need a few hundred or we may not need any at all! But we need the assurance that someone will help us if we fall at the last hurdle. You could be the saviour of the festival and we’d be happy to shout it from the roof tops!!
We have received 2 offers to underwrite £600 of the festival’s funds but we will need more to make it all possible.
Crowd funding
We need help from our great communities on Tyneside to make the festival happen this year. It cost around £18,000 to put on the festival and we estimate that around 7,000 people will attend the festival over the two days. It would take less that £3.00 from each person attending to fund the festival outright and add some lovely bells and whistles too!
We need our guests to get behind the festival and give their £3.00 or a little more if they can, to ensure the festival happens. £3.00 is less than you’d pay to see just one of the bands on our set list and we’ve got loads more!
Your donations will be recognised on social media, and depending on the amount, your donation could be listed on our website or even in the festival programme.
Events
We need people to attend our fundraisers, join in the fun, enjoy the music and entertainment and donate what you can!
We have a family fundraising event on Sunday 17th April, at Wallsend Memorial Hall (The Mem), 12 – 4pm; a fundraising gig night at Bar Loco on April 23rd and another gig at the Cumberland Arms on 12th May.
We’d really like people to organise their own fundraising events – why not try your hand at organising a Bunting Party to raise funds for the festival and help decorate the park at the same time. We’ll help where we can and promote your efforts on social media too!
We’re also open to other fundraising ideas too, sponsored events maybe, cakes sales, plant sales, etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated!