ventnor jazz divas festival planned for 13/14/15 September 2002

planning and designing a new kind of jazz festival which aspires to be both culturally significant and commercially successful is fascinating and frankly bloody hard work, but also great fun.

First thing: build a team to help. Ideally, you need a team of knowledge jazz fans with a willingness to work for hours for no remuneration. But you also need a graphic designer, web-designer, experienced promoter, professional charity fund-raiser, professional PR person,and experts in staging, lighting and PA systems. A good jazz agent or agency is also helpful.

Then run a few small gigs to get a feel for the issues of promotion, ticket sales, band-bookings, catering and people handling - oh, and raise some more money. Apply for all the public fiunding you are eligible for, then some more. Finally work up a pitch for commercial and private sponsors. develop a great festival programme, book the acts you want, then go out and sell the idea to jazz fans world-wide.