ComEnts

The Fringe Festival press launch seems to have gone quite well, we're getting some really good press.

BBC Berkshire have a fantastic preview in their Festivals section, including a picture of me! Well some of the fringe team including me and my blog co-writer AK.

Local listings magazine Blah Blah also gave us some fantastic coverage. They even put a little 4 page pullout in their August issue which is fantastic. Their editorial has some interesting points. They mention that the Fringe is at the same time as Edinburgh Fringe - have to say, before this year I didn't realise that - and they think that because of that, and the fact that a lot of people are away in August is the reason the Fringe programme is mainly live music orientated. They suggest doing it a different month next year. It is true that the programme is mainly live music, but I think the reasons for having it in the week running up to the Carling Weekend are pretty convincing. It is a time when the national media focuses it's attention on Reading anyway and it's a good way to present the story. Our outlook has always been that tens of thousands of people descend on Reading for The Carling weekend and then leave again without really knowing what great arts are in Reading all year round the other people I really want to reach are local people who go to the festival and don't realise there's all this local talent.

I'm not sure if it's the month and the Edinburgh Fringe which mean it's mainly live music. I think it's down to us not having enough of the right contacts. The main base of the organising group came from a 'live music' background. We'd love to have more arts events on, we've tried our best this year, and it's certainly a much more diverse line-up than last year, but we'll need to keep improving. One of the things we need to keep doing is diversifying who's involved with the organisational side of the Fringe so we can get in touch with more people. This year three of the new people we have involved Joe, Elaine and Steve Green brought in a load of new events through their contacts. Every creative person we can meet brings a new set of contacts, and that means we can spread our net of events wider and wider.

As Ben Marwood mentioned in his Drowned In Sound preview, we do have a problem with venues. I think next year we're really going to have to get creative with venues. We're also going to have to try harder to inspire people to put events on, at the moment we possibly give the impression (wrongly) that we'll arrange events for people. We've spent so much time trying to organise peoples events for them that we haven't always been able to do all the admin and keeping people in touch with what's going on.

I heard some students on the train the other evening saying that Reading is rubbish for going out and there's nothing to do, that used to be true (or maybe I was like them and just didn't know about the stuff there was) but there's an incredible amount going on at the moment and through the Fringe I've learnt that the stuff I knew about was only the tip of the iceberg! I'm sure there's plenty more out there we haven't found or got in the programme yet.

We are learning all the time though, and we'll get better. Constructive criticism is always useful, although if you give it to us I can't promise that we won't try and recruit you to help us improve things next year!



Screwball tickets available now!