I believe I may have committed the cardinal sin of blogging: not posting enough.

okay, so in my last post I said we had problems, but I didn't really say what they were, other than that they pertained to licensing and they were pretty big.

for obvious reasons, we need to apply for licensing from the appropriate authorities for the various aspects of our festival - namely, fundraising and performance. the license for fundraising (the house-to-house license) is fairly straightforward with the support of the BMDP, as you can imagine - we only need to detail where we'll be soliciting the public, approximately how many people will be involved and how we're going to go about that.

we're having lots of problems with the licensing for performance, however. essentially, we need a public entertainment license from the police and we need an arts entertainment license from the media development authority. in 2004 when we were still with RJC, we only needed the public entertainment license and the house-to-house license. since then, things have changed - we're no longer with an educational instution, evidently policy has changed (although I'm not sure what exactly) so we need an arts entertainment license nevertheless.

while this sounds reasonably straightforward on paper, it's hellish in practice. it means that we need every performer's name and the time they're scheduled for on paper when we submit the application, it means that we need the whole festival organised even before it can be given the green light.

so if the publicity person from somethingood is pushing you to register, now you know why. :)

our secondary problem is logistics. while I've approached a couple of firms and got a decent quote from a friend's contact, it nevertheless remains that we may have to spend thousands on just getting sound systems. and if we cannot find sponsorship, the money comes out of the public's pocket. the festival is still more than a month away so I refuse to go down that avenue - if you're good enough to donate, you don't deserve to have your money spent on something else. because donations are the end, not the means.

with all this happening against the backdrop of the general election, I must say I've been finding out things. great things - finding out there are so many people out there striving against the cliches to make a difference, hearing people talk of ideas like they would of action. it's an exciting world, to say the least.