Dorset and Weymouth musicians, dancers, writers and businesses are invited to participate in the Wessex Folk Festival blog

This is a call to all Weymouth and Dorset musicians, dancers, writers and businesses to invite you to participate in this Wessex Folk Festival blog and our main Wessex Folk Festival web site.

If you are interested in helping the Wessex Folk Festival take place in June 2009 and would like to promote or market your band, music, craft, art, dance troupe, business, or anything else appropriate alongside the Wessex Folk Festival, we would like to hear from you.

You can contact us quite easily by telling us who you are and how to get in touch with you in the comments form at the foot of this article (itself a form of advertising for you).

Here are some benefits to both of us:

Businesses

The Wessex Folk Festival believes that a wide range of businesses can benefit from its activities.

This section deals with how the Wessex Folk Festival can help your business.

It may be that a small change in the way we operate in the promotional lead up to and in the running of the Wessex Folk Festival itself could reap your business major returns in profitability. You are in a better position than us to identify these changes. Tell us what we can do to help you and we will see what we can do to make the changes and help increase your profits.

Whether you are a small start up business, a charitable organisation, an established member of the Chamber of Commerce or a multi-national conglomerate, we would like to encourage you to join in the discussion about how we can make Wessex Folk Festival work better for you, your organisation and our Weymouth and Dorset community.

Weymouth and Dorset bands, musicians, performers, entertainers, dancers, artists and other creative activities.

Wessex Folk Festival is fundamentally about building together a community of local creative artistes in the context of folk music and traditional dance to provide an opportunity for musicians, singers, dancers and others to showcase their art and talent.

There are many ways we can help showcase dancers and musicians, ranging from appearances on our main Hope Square stage to intimate performances in our open mike concerts. Street performers, street dancers, street entertainers, buskers and many others can all benefit from the concentration of people interested in the arts achieved by the Wessex Folk Festival. Acoustic sessions in pubs include a wide variety of song and music including Irish, sea shanties, Bluegrass and more, and enable even beginners to perform on formal or improvised stages. Our formal concerts include big name artists. There are ceilidhs, workshops and more.

Mostly we are about performance art but, if you are a creator of fine or graphic art and would like to promote your paintings or other creations, talk to us and we will see how we can help you.

If you have a craft business, the many people who attend the Wessex Folk Festival may also be interested in your products.

Artistic and business partners in marketing and promotion

To be successful, the Wessex Folk Festival has to market itself in the same way as any other organisation and this offers businesses and artistic organisations in Weymouth and Dorset an opportunity to market themselves alongside the festival - to be Wessex Folk Festival Marketing Partners.

Advertise your business or artistic activity on this blog or on our main Wessex Folk Festival site.

If your core activity would be promoted by exposure to the people who visit our Wessex Folk Festival sites, you can receive immediate benefits by partnering with us.

Over the next months in the lead up to June 2009, we will be promoting our Wessex Folk Festival sites hard and, by being on our sites, you can get immediate benefit.

What is the cost?

Since the Wessex Folk Festival is founded on an ethical and artistic basis, nobody need be excluded by reason of cost. Essentially, the Wessex Folk Festival is a free festival. Hope Square was host to thousands of music lovers during the June 2008 festival who enjoyed the free music.

However, to run the festival costs money. The list of expenses incurred is quite remarkable.

To partner with the Wessex Folk Festival marketing campaign could cost you nothing, but, if you are making money out of our marketing, we do ask you to share in the costs by way of some sponsorship contribution.

If you are a business or artistic activity in Weymouth, Dorset, or even elsewhere, and you feel there could be a synergy with us and our marketing activities, let's talk first about how we can jointly market and then about any contribution.

Writers about music, dance, traditional or folk orientated activities.

If you are a writer or author actively engaged in writing about anything related to Wessex Folk Festival activities and would like to partner with us in our off-line or on-line promotion, we would like to hear from you.

It may be that you have a blog or web site on a related subject and would like to link with us or you might want to contribute an article to this blog about your Weymouth or Dorset band, dance troupe, club or society.

Perhaps you are a writer on a magazine, newspaper or local television and would like to do an article on us.

Finally

We are a community led organisation of volunteers seeking to make Weymouth and Dorset a better place in which to live and visit. We promote the arts and artists. Our activities could even be regarded as regenerative to the local and wider community. What better story could there be?

Talking is the first step in getting involved.

Let's talk.

We look forward to hearing from you in the comments below :-)

Eventually, we look forward to you joining in with the party at the Wessex Folk Festival in June 2009.

Paul Openshaw - Wessex Folk Festival 2009