This first food and wine festival took place over two-days in the grounds of Pevensey Castle. The total number of visitors for the weekend was 5678.
There were 33 exhibitors made up from 25 paying exhibitors who sold food drink or craft; five non-paying exhibitors from the Pevensey & Westham area, selling paintings, flour and spun goods and the Pevensey Villages Partnership. The other three stands were children’s activities; money received from Living History was given back to Wealden District Council. First Response also took a stand and carried out CPR demonstrations on the Sunday
Pevensey Villages Partnership offered guided walks around the Castle and raised over £800 towards other projects; St Nicolas’s Church held a talk on the Sunday on its history and raised £68 and the Pevensey Trust Car Park received over £400 for parking charges.
Entertainment
Throughout both days, visitors could attend cooking and wine demonstrations in the main area
Entertainment Tent
Longman Brewery took the concession for the bar, serving locally brewed beers and local musicians took to the stage from noon until close of the festival on both days.
Entertainment for children
Archery – children could make their own bow and fletch arrows plus traditional craft making, leatherwork to drop spindles, felt making to pottery and face painting.
The event was awesome I could not fault anything the children’s workshops food and drink was all fairly priced. We had a great day, the park, ride attendants were so friendly it was well organised, and the atmosphere was great. Well done Wealden and please co1ntinue to put this event on next year…Samantha Vickers
Background
Marketing the event
As this was the first event, coverage of the festival was important. A national distribution company was used to circulate flyers and programmes and the rest was handled locally.
Advertising
Advertising was taken in Your County, Aspect County, What’s On, 1066 Flyer for festivals (free). Sovereign Radio advert. Roaring 20’s programme (Bexhill)
Promotional Material
20k Flyers/postcards printed 10k beer mats printed 20k programmes Double crown posters on seafront A3 and A4 posters plus various sizes of banners
Website
Total unique visitors – 9,082 – 8,803 visitors from UK. 64 from USA. Then small amounts from other countries.
Best day (unique) – 1,229 (Friday before festival) Av. page views per visitor – 3.2
Order of popularity (pages) – Home, The Festival, Exhibitors, Entertainment, Download the programme (late addition), Parking and trains, Living history workshop.
Referrers’ websites
Search engines – 690 Facebook – 305 Visit1066 – 279 Wealdnet – 127 Visitsussex – 118 visitsouthestengland – 68 Twitter – 53 Wealden.gov – 33 Various other small ones then such as Wartling Parish.
The majority of visitors manually typed in the URL http://wealdenfestivals.co.uk/
PR Coverage
Articles about the event appeared in the following
Sovereign FM, Eastbourne Herald, Pevensey Bay Life, Your County, Morepour website, The Argus, Sussex Express 1066Country.com, The Wealden Eye magazine, Visit Sussex website, Buxted Village website, Discover the Garden of England website, Things to do in Sussex website, Bluebell Vineyard website Food Festival Finder website
I felt that it was a great afternoon out, the size was intimate enough to feel ‘local’ but there was enough to keep us entertained so thank you for a positive experience and a great new event…. Marcella Aldous-Brown
Costs
The net cost for the event was £25k net (Gross 34k – 9k income). Original budget forecast was £20k. Due to concerns from the Safety Action Group (SAG), they requested that more marshals and security were required to
cover ’the unknown attendance’’.
Reusable cups
To help reduce the amount of refuse at the site from disposable cups etc. we produced a branded plastic reusable cup. Although not all of the cups were sold, the sales covered the cost for production produced an extra £314 towards other costs
Park & Ride
The SAG group were also concerned about car parking in Pevensey village, as the high street is very narrow and in the event of an emergency, could restrict access to the emergency services. A Park & Ride service was then organised costing in excess of £1600, with buses, hire of field, marshalling and signage.
Please see evaluation from Bus Company
Audit
As monies were taken over the weekend for Park & Ride and due to site not belonging to WDC, our audit team were concerned about the security. A safe was bought and placed in the Tourism Information Office at Pevensey Bay. Sealed money bags were used and tickets sold were numbered. After each shift, money was collected by WDC officer and signed for. The safe at Hailsham was also used over the weekend to store some takings.
Pros and cons of using Pevensey Castle
Pros
Great location and backdrop
Lots of open space for the visitor Close to public transport
Cons
Height restrictions on entrance and exit, difficult for some vehicles during set up.
As Pevensey is a heritage site, precautions were taking regarding exhibitors stands, as you cannot put pegs more than 6 inches long into the ground, this would have been more of problem for the exhibitor stands if we had had severe gales.
Not enough parking for the village could have saved money if we had car parks nearer, as we would not have had the outlay for the buses etc.
Uneven ground prevented some disable access
Officer time
This event took three months of normal working hours, and in excess of three weeks outside of office hours, this does not include time at the event.
What an awesome weekend, a very enjoyable and well organised festival, great food, music, kids activities, facilities and Long man beers, I really can’t fault it. You MUST do it next year, there’s also bags of room to expand..The Maddox family
Summary
The festival was a great success with both the visitor the exhibitor and local people, and the evaluation forms completed expressed the same thing. The consensus on the comments question was an outstanding MORE (see evaluation report)
And the event attracted people from a huge area – stretching as far as Seaford (15 miles), Hove (28 miles), Lewes (18 miles), Chelmsford (82 miles), Alton (79 miles) and Crowborough (24 miles). More noteworthy however, is that the vast majority did not travel very far; supporting the earlier finding in Figure 5 that 24% of people travelled to the event on foot. Figure 8 shows that 24% travelled from BN24, 13% from BN27, 12% from BN22 and 12% BN23.
English Heritage
English Heritage were also very pleased and have talked about using the whole of the site, which would mean a lot more time required to organise, as you would need at lease 70 exhibitors to fill the space.
Next Year?
When planning for next year, officer time to be considered and the costings. It is also important to keep the event in-house, as we have more control of format etc. plus the costs to outsource would be very high.
This year we secured £1250 in sponsorship from three different businesses. Sponsorship could be the way forward as budgets will dwindle over the next few years, so could be worth seeking a bigger sponsor, especially a business from the area, but work to secure this needs to start early.
What a fabulous event Well organised thanks to you and your team Everyone we spoke to had nothing but praise It also helped to raise the profile of the village and special buildings like the Court House and Stone Cross Windmill so many thanks for inviting us….Stone Cross Mill
Report, Jane Kilby, Wealden Council
