Dear Noisily Family,
Noisily is a labour of love, it always has been, and when we sat down in the Autumn of 2011 to start planning our first outing into Coney Woods, we had no idea that now, almost a decade later, we’d be where we are.
Our intentions were the same then as they are now, and at the bottom of the pile of goals was money. Not because we were adverse to making any, but because we were too excited about the festival we were creating.
Unfortunately, not only did we not make a profit, but like most small music festivals with inexperienced management we ended up losing a large chunk of our collective life savings in year one.
In the years since we have strived to streamline our internal management and operations, to manage the increasingly more complex budget lines, to keep the insanely high levels of production and programming where they are without growing the festival dramatically to cover these costs.
Each year we try to pay people more fairly and create a more seamless experience by investing in infrastructure, and inevitably costs creep up as fast as we can sell tickets, and until 2019’s event we had failed to pay ourselves fairly for the time we put in to make the event happen.
We are now in a position where the festival works like a well oiled machine, our operations are streamlined and we have a team we know and love to work with who share in the ethos of what Noisily is, yet still we closed the books on Noisily 2019 without registering a profit.
We do not want to grow the festival dramatically in order to increase revenues; Noisily is so special because of its size and intimacy. We don’t want to sell it to one of the big corporate players, because that too would destroy everything we have worked towards. And we certainly don’t want to reduce the content and production of the festival because, well, it wouldn’t be Noisily!
Having been over the budgets multiple times we came to the unanimous conclusion that if Noisily is to stand a chance of surviving, that we need to ask you, the ticket buyers, to pay a little more for your tickets. We announced this after the festival, and were bolstered by the support of many people fighting our corner when a small number of people complained about the increase, professing how the experience was definitely worth it.
We have reduced the number of tiers from five to three, and where previously our ticket prices ranged from £135 – £175 + booking fee. They now range from £157 – £187 + booking fee.
Likewise, we have had to increase campervan tickets by £10, and, like our close neighbour Shambala, will be charging for ALL car parking spots at the festival (albeit £20, not £40 like other events in the industry) in order to raise more money for infrastructure and the charity ‘Stand for Trees’. It is our hope that this will simultaneously raise more funds for both the charity and the festival, and also encourage people to use our new shuttle bus service from Market Harborough Station, and nationwide coach service with Tuned in Travel.
We believe in honesty, and we thought long and hard about disclosing our financial situation publicly, but in the end knew that it would be the best way to illustrate why we are making these nominal changes to a few costs at the festival. At the same time if you compare Noisily to other festivals with a similar standard of production relative to their size, they all priced equally or higher.
Noisily is not a cash cow, it never will be. It’s not going to be our nest egg, and we are a small collective of people working remotely throughout the year because of the love we have for the festival. However Einstein once said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome”, and if we can’t make Noisily work this year, then sadly, it may well be our last.
We appreciate your support more than we can articulate.
Thank you,
The Noisily co founders – Charles, Lachie, Will, Robbie & James
