a lot like some stuff we did with virtual festival and digital festival ie an umbrella beneath which various strands could run. it’s also a bit like brighton festival and/or the Fringe

to work well the pay off needs to be that the umbrella gives the individual events something they can’t have on their own – so the people orgsnising stuff need to see a chance to get extra punters, different punters, more sponsorship, new ideas, whatever

i’m not sure anyone really gets anything form lumping stuff together, except the people responsible for ‘brand brighton’ – like the council, wired sussex, business forum, etc. and I know that the digital festival cost a lot of money to coordinate, which is exactly which I stopped tryng to get the virtual festival together

happy to meet and talk about it – how about reviving the web awards as a showcase event in the midst of festival season. something you could ‘tack on’ to more or less any event?

best wishes

mark

ps maybe take you up on that coffee next week if you’re in town?

Wired Sussex organised it in 2007, not been once since.

http://www.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk/

Am guessing they got money to do it somehow, perhaps grant money. Not sure though.

Also, ‘Head’ is distributed rather than physically Brighton-based. It takes place (over here) primarily in the evening – which would have an impact on any arts/culture stuff that could be potentially partne(red) with it.

I don’t know if they’re doing it again, but last year’s White Nights (December) were a huge success and there are several cities in the UK planning something similar in the coming months. There’s also a Jewish Film Festival, an Early Music festival (not sure of dates), and an Acoustic Music festival in Lewes. There was also a ‘Burlesue Against Breat Cancer’ event around that time last year, but I don’t know if the organisers are planning to do it again.

There are other semi-regular events that could tie into this too – Val Cartei at Adaptive organises Culture Geeks (which would be a good place to start in terms of bringing the two worlds together) and interdisciplinary co-working spaces like Coachwerks might also be interested in getting involved.

Of course, the issue for something like this is ‘who’s going to do it’? Would a large(ish) organisation like the local tourist board be able to commit time and resources to this? Would any of the festival organisers have time to think outside of their own remit (given that most of them run on tight budgets and stretched resources)?

Also, in whose interest would it be to pull these events together? What agenda is being set by/for individual festivals, and is there something that they all have in common – other than simply being festivals in Brighton?

You could be looking at something as simple as a marketing campaign to draw people to Brighton – which would seem to me to fall between the council, the tourist board and development agencies like Seeda and Wired Sussex. What plans do those agencies have already, what work have they done on this, and is there a way to avoid duplicating that work?

Or are you looking at something more ambitious – a ‘Brighton Festival Pass’, making our festivals behave more like SXSW? In that case, it’s back to the funding requirements for all those festivals – is it really feasible to offer that kind of access?

Events like Dconstruct tend to sell out very quickly, and between the various warm up/close down parties, gatherings, workshops and the conference itself, is fairly all-consuming. There isn’t really the time to tag anything on to Dconstruct (one of its strengths, I think) – and that runs straight into Barcamp – another all-consuming event.

Also, is distributed rather than physically Brighton-based. It takes place (over here) primarily in the evening – which would have an impact on any arts/culture stuff that could be potentially partnered with it.

I love the idea of an interdisciplinary festival but to be honest I think the better model for that would be bottom-up rather than top-down; something new that crosses boundaries and invites participation from other people – rather than setting requirements and agendas for existing events that might not fit with their own aims.