My sister has decided to organise a monthly craft fair in our home town because we keep meeting the same people at various events, most of which have been poorly attended because of lack of advertising. So she has emailed a few of us to get a monlthy onle going.

Re a licence, the council's licencing deot have said she doesn;t need one (eh?)

Anyone who wants to be a member needs to provide a photocopy heir PL insurance/

The hall takes 25 tables and costs £53 per hour. I've told her she needs to charge more that  straight divide of the hall cost by number of tables as each week there will be one or 2 people who don;t turn up and she would be left to cover the cost of the hall personally.

Anything else she might need to know or do (kinda miffed she didn;t ask me to be involved but she's in charge, she can do it her way  :mwaha:)

send her over to the UK Craft Board - under UK fairs there is a couple of people who set up their own and there are also lots of people commenting what went good or bad at an event they attended.

She will have to cover her hall-fee, her electricity, her insurance and a 10% drop-out rate. Plus costs for advertising and her own wages/profit. So quite a bit more than just the hall fee. Advertising will be a large amount of her budget as well.

She will also have to check dates with other events, to make sure she doesn't clash with anything else.

Here is the link
http://www.craftsforum.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?14-UK-craft-fairs

Even though stallholders will have PL insurance she will need PL insurance of some sort for the event I would think.

I'll bet there's plenty of info on the web about organising an event.

Thanks,

I;ve copied your posts in an email to her, and to the other people she's in contact with, as I'm pretyy sure she's not listening to my suggestions/

she will, after she shelled out 100s of her own money  :mwaha:

 :mwaha: SHe won;t be shelling out any of her own money, if her hubby has his way!

lol Polly......someone in a nearby village started a craft fair I will see if she can give you any info....

I've been toying with the same idea round by me, not got as far as actually doing anything yet but my craft association is run and mostly attended by OAPs both customers and stall holders. Not ideal, I know they have disposable income but they prefer to buy embroidery kits, naff painted glass items and awful handmade cards (sorry to the OAPs for sweeping generalisations).
There are some younger members with nice contemporary products so thinking of a breakaway group.
Keep us informed how it goes Polly.

I should think so!!


Looks like you need one

(you might even find some OAPs joining - f'r'instance I would if I lived up there)

I will do Corrie. There are a few issues regarding location and type of crafters but she's secured a notice in the local paper for free where she is asking for local crafters and is hopefully starting in August. Kilmarnock, though, is a bit down trodden as the well off (of which there are loads) shop elsewhere.

 :mwaha: @ Elaine (or should that be Corrie  )

she should advertise on that craft forum and on stallfinder.

and there is also these guys which could supply some stall holders and probably also some help:

Edinburgh Craft Guerrilla
www.edinburghcraftguerrilla.blogspot.com

Well, as usual, she ignored me email! She can do it her own way.

It's weird, she's had her own wee business for a year now, but since I started there is quite a bit of rivalry. Twice she's asked if we could share a stall, and twice I've very politley said no (that's a big deal cos I stress when I have to say no to people).

I offered her a few names of people who make very lovely jewellery and a couple of other things, but she's not asking them (one makes her own allsorts beads, sis buys the beads, she wasn;t happy when I said she couldn;t dictate what people could and couldn't sell).

Anyway, a few peeps are meeting up on Sunday (not me, I've a fair on, and she knew that before orgainising the meeting  ) but hopefully she'll let me know where things are at.