The Basingstoke Kite Festival ran from it's inception in 1992 for 28 years, up to it's forced absence in 2020.
At the time of writing ( Jan 2021 ) the future of the festival is uncertain. COVID prevented the festival from being held in 2020, and is likely to do so again in 2021. The festival is also living with the need to reinvent itself somewhat, after being forced to relocate from it's long time home at Down Grange Sports Centre due to development activities there.
Having been involved with running this festival right from the start, it occurred to me that although copious amounts of material are 'out there' about past festivals, usually from happy attendees, there's nowhere that actually tries to tell the story of the festival. Which is a shame, because it has a story to tell. It's very largely a happy story, and they are always the most difficult to relate - happiness is a hard thing to pin down.
My recollection of the last 28 years is certain to be incomplete, and highly unlikely to be perfectly accurate. But nothing ventured, etc. If this story excites people to provide corrections or enhancements, so much the better - I think :). But this will be my perspective, and ultimately this kite lands on my head :).
Kiteflying was sexy in 1991 ! It was a bit different, a bit edgy, a time of rapid advances in kite technology and design. At least, that's my recollection :). I'd been flying kites for a few years, and was introduced to the local club ( the Loddon Valley Kitefliers, or LVKF ) by a fellow flyer who I'd met on rec.kites ( hi Andrew ! ). The club would meet up weekly at a local pub ( The Jolly Farmer ), and fly in the field behind, plus a few other sites around the town. It was a young, bouncy affair, with a cross section of people of all ages.
Credit for the club's character is largely due to it's founders, Pete and Chris Hillman, who organised, moderated, and sometimes cajoled it's members as we threw ourselves into things.
The history of the club and the history of the Festival are entwined. I'm certain that in the minds of most LVKF members the Festival is now the defining feature of the club. But it's important to highlight the fact that in the beginning this was not so.
There was a time early in the life of the club when there was no Basingstoke Kite Festival, and club members would enjoy themselves flying, and visiting kite festivals ( many now long gone ) and local events to fly and to watch ( and other things, mostly in the evenings, but this is a sober and strictly legal blog :) ).
In a way, having a festival to call our own gradually became a 'right of passage' style concern. What sort of kite club were we, if we could not sustain our own festival ? Wasn't it a way to 'give back' to the kiteflying community that we had become a part of ? Didn't we want to show off so that we could gain members and grow ?. Didn't we want an excuse for a big party with our kiteflying buddies from other clubs ? Members were enthusiastic, and in the end we decided to approach the council about using one of the more open pieces of space in Basingstoke - Down Grange.
It's one thing to have an event, and quite another to make all the little decisions about it that end up defining it's character.
My recollection is that we never specifically had a plan to become an ''international' event. We've never advertised ourselves as such. I think that as we developed our thinking about the type of event we were, in the direction of 'public display' as opposed to 'kiteflying for the masses', the thought process was simply along the lines of having attractions that people, kiteflyers included, might otherwise be unable to see.
We reached out, tentatively at first, to international flyers who we had read about in magazines, or possibly met at other festivals. Gradually we have built up a reputation for being a friendly and accommodating event, relatively low stress as such things go, and this has always helped us a little. I think we're proud that we have punched somewhat above our weight when it comes to attracting guests over the course of our history.
So now we are an international festival in everything but name. Perhaps there's just a little bit of British 'reserve' in our reluctance to splash 'International' on the things we do.
What does 'international' mean from a festival organising perspective ? It certainly means that language skills are needed to a degree, although perhaps not to a great extent - after all, we are English and can just speak loudly, yes ? Fortunately, the topics of conversation tend to be focused on travel arrangements and kites, and a very limited vocabulary can cover a lot of ground. And it goes without saying that our skills usually pale besides theirs !
But there's more to it than just talking - it means dealing with the practicalities of picking people up from airports and getting them back to airports, it means jetlag, it means planning far in advance so that guests can get good deals for their travel. And of course, there is competition. The people we are interested in having as guests are people who many others may also be interested in hosting. We have learned not to take guests for granted, and to enjoy them when we can. Whether Brexit will pose significant challenges remains an open question.
When we first started, we envisaged being able to charge for entry, as some other festivals of the time were able to. But this never happened. Not only was it inconsistent with the Council's vision - after all, they were sponsoring the event with taxpayers money - but the site was simply too porous.
So in addition to the Council's input, which covers several major expenses, we've always relied on voluntary donations, collected in a variety of ways, plus income from pitch fees for traders. And, of course, sponsors.
Sponsors were critical during the early years of the festival. Each year, we would scratch our heads and send letters and prospectuses to any local business that we hoped might be interested in giving us money. We were very fortunate to find a significant sponsor ( Sun Life of Canada ), whose generosity sustained us for our first few years. Our main financial problem was cashflow - without sponsorship, we just did not have the reserves to shell out for guests and other expenses prior to the festival itself. We regularly received sponsorship from a small number of local businesses in addition to Sun Life.
Slowly, over the course of many years, we accumulated reserves. These were very largely the product of income from public donations made at the festival. By the mid noughties, we had reached the position where our cashflow problems were no longer problems, and the absolute requirement for sponsorship ( other than by the Council ) as a precondition for funding the festival essentially went away. This was a relief ! We still sought, and gratefully received, sponsorship from local businesses, but it was no long a worrying thing that we needed to sweat about and focus on at every planning meeting.
Most kite festivals have historically had specialist kite traders in attendance. Often there's a relationship between the kite people promoting the Festival, and local ( and even not-so-local ) kite trading businesses, and we were no different. These people are often personal friends, and
Although it was never planned, the focus of LVKF as an organisation gradually shifted away from encouraging general kiteflying activities towards stewardship of the Festival. This was in part due to the perceived success of the Festival, both with the kiteflying community and the local community, but was also due to several other factors.
The Festival was, by itself, able to sustain the club financially. Although the amounts we were able to raise from a given Festival were never especially large, and although we lived constantly with the risk that the weather would be unkind and reduce turnout, gradually as the years went by we understood what was important and how to manage our risks.
© Mark de Roussier 2021, all rights reserved.