Earthfest 2010 Wrap-Up

The Good:  All the bands were amazing!!  It was the best year ever for music.  There wasn't a weak band in the batch.  And Jasmine found her guitar again.  Lots of old KCI grads came back to play and visit.  More teachers than ever came to help or watch, and many stayed right until the very end to clean up.  We sold 24 hand-painted t-shirts!  We had a really good crowd.  The facebook site has a few people pictures, and this one has a ton.  Editing of the video I shot of every band and everything else is in progress.   We were interviewed by CTV and Rogers.  If anyone has a link to a clip, let me know!      

The Bad:  The d'Archangel lead singer sprained his ankle mid-performance - yet kept on playing. Searching the school for a lost guitar was really depressing, so it was such a relief to find it had just been taken in error. The movies were barely attended. 

The Ugly:  Lots of people walked in without paying.  We're in the hole over $200.  One mic got taken - hopefully accidentally - which will raise that debt to over $300 if it can't be recovered.  It's just five bucks, people!!

Next year ....

We're going to have to get bands to sell tickets, i.e. give us money upfront in exchange for tickets which they can sell to get their money back or just pitch and call it a donation or fee.  We paid to rent an expensive sound board and sound guy - excellent but expensive - and several people don't want to go backwards to low quality sound.  But I'd like to stop funding this adventure.  Thanks to Mr. St. Cyr for building a cool sound system table to fit over the seats for little money and really fast! We can use it over and over for events like these. And thanks to Mr. Fricke and the tech crew for a perfect evening.

We'll have to relocate the ticket takers and make sure to get student volunteers who will rabidly watch who's coming and going and be willing to stop people from just walking by.

I need to make sure kids are on top of tasks they take on.  For the most part, everyone did everything beautifully, but some advertising didn't happen because it was left too late, and teachers weren't being asked to supervise by the kids, they just happened to volunteer.  We'll have to explore what stops kids from getting on these jobs - whether it's just general procrastination or is there some anxiety around it.

Showing No Impact Man again cost $100 for the rights, and only two people showed up to see it.  Many of my neighbours had said they wanted to see it, but none came.  We didn't get much of a turn-out last time either, and when we showed Wall-E last year, only one person came.  The only person who watched Ferngully, was my daughter.  I'm done with movie nights. 

During the evening I had a chance to talk to a few people who have been there for every Earthfest.  The first year we did it we threw everything together and hoped for the best, and it was huge.  We had about twice as many people as we did this year.  What did we do right that year?  According to students, it's nothing we did or didn't do.  It's the hippie factor.  We're losing hippies like flies around here.  I still wear long skirts with little jingly bells on the ties - I've got one on right now - but there's pretty much only one token hippie student left in the building.  Why are only hippies associated with environmentalism anyway?  There are lots of non-folk musicians who are all about the planet.  Maybe next year our slogan could be:

Earthfest 2011:  It's not just for hippies. 

Okay, any better ideas out there??