Events and Festivals Working Group Meeting
Thursday 19th January, 6pm, Carmarthen Golf Club
The Events and Festivals Working Group Meeting was held as a cross cluster
event for all working groups formed in relation to these themes.
Representatives from the Central and West Clusters attended.
The aim of the evening was to allow working groups to further develop their
ideas and prioritise one idea that they will present to their cluster at the next
Tourism Cluster Meetings, which are taking place at the end of February.
To help the working groups to do this, we arranged a 30 minute ‘Ask the
Expert Session’ which allowed the working groups to get expert advice that
could help them develop their ideas.
The experts on hand to answer questions on the evening were:
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Non Gwilym – Dathlu Diwylliant Grant Scheme run by Menter Bro
Dinefwr. NonGwilym@menterbrodinefwr.org
Emyr Jones – Principal Licensing Officer at Carmarthenshire County
Council. EORJones@carmarthenshire.gov.uk
Emyr Price - Carmarthenshire Landscape and Heritage Grant Scheme.
EPrice@carmarthenshire.gov.uk
Conway Davies – Hercules Project. C.R.Davies@tsd.ac.uk
Contact details for all experts are above, and they are happy to help with any
further questions that you may have.
Question and Answer Session:
Q: What funding is out there to help move our event ideas into reality? Is
there any financial assistance? Or advice on how to get a professional
study done, or how to go for the big pots of money like Interreg and RDP?
A: Non Gwilym, Dathlu Diwylliant. The Dathlu Diwylliant project has a grant
to support projects which promote Welsh culture, language and heritage.
There is also a project running at the moment called Innovative Communities,
and they have some funding available for studies.
Conway Davies, Hercules Project. The Hercules Project has no grant pot,
but can aid in promoting your event which may lead to funding access.
Q: The vital thing is ensuring that festivals don’t clash. How do you
‘book’ the weekend that you want?
A: George Reid, Chair of CTA. A central point for events information has
been brought up by every cluster. The CTA are currently talking to Visit Wales
about the possibility of tapping into the Digital Tourism Fund that they have
with the view to setting up a digital site that would house events information.
We will keep you updated.
Q: If you wanted to hold a festival, do you need to go right back to the
start so to speak? For example, if you wanted to close a street in
Carmarthen, are you starting from scratch, or is there a system already
in place?
A: Emyr Jones, Principal Licensing Officer. There are already templates in
place. The licensing department have no funding, but we can help you keep
your costs down by advising you of, for example, venues that already have a
license so you don’t need to pay for one and so on, which will help shorten the
process and minimise your costs.
Comments from the floor:
It’s better to start an event small, then let it grow. Too often 80% of the work is
done by 20% of the people. You need help from bodies such as
Carmarthenshire County Council to move forward into large scale events but
often have to prove the event works first.
If you’re looking to put on something different – for example, a medieval reenactment, you sometimes have to find your audience first then integrate
them into the structure and work backwards, to ensure you are delivering
something that appeals to your target audience.
Q: We don’t want our event ideas to be completely grant dependant.
However, having said that, if there is funding available, we don’t want to
miss out on it. I’m aware of 2 schemes that offer funding for events at
the moment. One is run through the County Council Tourism Team and
offers some assistance towards marketing costs outside the county
(Max £5000), and the other is run by the Community Bureau, offering
support to set up new community events. My question is directed
towards Non – what can your grant scheme support?
A: Non Gwilym, Dathlu Diwylliant. The Dathlu Diwylliant grant scheme
could potentially put funding towards both of the Festival ideas that you have
been discussing tonight. (Namely a Heritage / Historical Pageant and a
Mabinogi Festival) We have a revenue grant of up to £5000 to help support
the development of events that celebrate local history and culture through the
Welsh Language. It is a 100% grant fund, so no match funding is required.
Emyr Price, Carmarthenshire Landscape and Heritage Scheme. Our
grant pot supports heritage projects. We can’t support a festival, but could
potentialyl fund heritage projects that could contribute to a festival – for
example, we could support things like historical costumes, heritage leaflets,
interpretation boards and so on.
Non & Emyr: Our schemes could potentially work together.
Comment from Project Team: The Strengthening the Tourism Appeal of
Rural Carmarthenshire (STARC) grant scheme could potentially have funds
that could be put towards a festival or event. Under the ‘Distinctive Rural
Hubs’ element of their grant scheme, they could look at funding things like a
permanent marquee to hold events. They couldn’t fund any non permanent
structure though.
Non Gwilyn: If you needed to access a marquee to host your event, it is
worth bearing in mind that lots of community groups have bought marquees
that they rent out at a much cheaper rate than commercial companies.
Q: Is there an Events Planning Toolkit available from Carmarthenshire
County Council?
A: Emyr Jones, Principal Licensing Officer. We have a lot of resources
available, but due to the fact that legislation is constantly changing, we don’t
have a toolkit as such.
Comment from the floor: It would be very useful to have a tool kit to refer to.
Emyr Jones, Principal Licensing Officer. We do have some materials
available – for example, a guide for one off events. But I would advise that if
you wanted to arrange an event, that you try and use the licensing process to
pull together all relevant parties. Normally, for community events, our service
is free of charge, and we’ll know what you need.
After the ‘Ask the Expert’ Session, each cluster returned to their discussion
groups to decide which of their ideas they would prioritise and present to the
others from their area at the next Cluster Meetings, to be held at the end of
February.