It’s a real shame that Artichoke and Durham County Council chose to place online tickets with Ticketmaster who are charging an admittedly small ticket price of £1 a ticket, although not so small once you add £2.95 for postage (a standard DL is 51p 1st class), so £3.95 for a ticket when they’re free if you pick them up in a series of locations across Durham, rather than using Eventbrite and just asking for a donation that would of raised significantly more money for the event.
Just think if they were getting a donation £2 (twice what they’re actually getting) plus gift aid at 25 percent would mean an increase of 125 percent in donations. And all for the want of not embracing the innovative, the now and going with the establishment (i.e. the largest ticketing sales company in the UK). With a reported 175,000 visitors in 2013, half of which surely live outside County Durham they could of raised an additional £175,000 or £218,750 with gift aid.
Instead based on 2013 visitor attendance (and assuming 1/2 the people can’t get to a free ticket office) they’ll raise £87,500 or £109,375 inc. gift aid (assuming tickets through Ticketmaster qualify as donations for gift aid), a total opportunity cost of -£109,375 with a private firm pocketing £258,125 to print and send tickets to people effectively publically subsidised at the expense of ACE and local authority investment in the event. WTF?!
A real failure in imagination. And people ask why arts funding in this country is broken. Just take a look.
I write here in a strictly private capacity, my views do not represent those of my day job at Tees Valley Arts or my role as a CLP Secretary, and I’ll try not to bring too much across from my freelance work. What you read and what you see here is what you get.