Wild Paths Festival and Local Music Venues Crowd Funder
We caught up with Ben of Wild Paths to check about this Crowd Funder. Not only is it aimed at helping secure the future of Wild Paths but also give much needed support to local music venues
"Wild Paths Festival and the spread of local venues we work with are an important part of our musical community. However in the last few months we've seen key venues close (Open) and others struggling to support their staff, whilst balancing leases, rents and business rates. There's no clear answer coming from the government on how venues and promoters can realistically proceed to function (anything less than the freedom to operate at 75% capacity for most is financially unfeasible) and so a number of event/campaign organisers and venue directors are turning to grassroot funding and hashtag campaigns (#letthemusicplay) to highlight the issue, raise awareness and also find vital funding. Wild Paths, like so many other festivals, has been left in a financially fragile state after having to cancel it's 2020 event and losing some of its key commercial funding partners. This campaign - 'save the festival and our local venues' and the associated media exposure will hopefully help to drive home how severe this situation is and rally the support of the community."
"Other crowdfunder success stories include Arctangent festival which managed to raise over £100K to not only help keep the festival going in 2021, but to allow it to deliver a jaw-dropping line-up to their devoted community of supporters. We're looking to raise a fraction of this amount (£15K) and will be donating a quarter of all the proceeds to the venues that sustain us and help to give Norwich its unique character. There'll also be a host of festival rewards available at different levels of support from VIP tickets for life, to special food & drink packages, partner gifts and even the opportunity to have a festival stage named after you."
Check out the Crowd Funder Page here
