Fairbridge Festival of Folk/Roots Music

[Tips for applicants] [Interstate applicants] [International applicants] [Online application form]

CLOSING DATE SEPT 30 2008

General Information

Applications to perform at the 2009 Festival are now open, and close on Sept 30th 2008 - late applications will not be accepted. Festival dates for 2009 are 17th to 19th April. We are will be running a half day of workshop and masterclass activities on the Friday afternoon.

Interstate applicants - please read this bit first, thanks. International applicants please be aware we can only accept applications from your agent in Australia - see here for more info. Unfortunately we are not able to recommend potential agents (they get completely swamped if we do!).

We require that you submit applications using the online application form HERE.

Fee quotes. We will guarantee a fee or equivalent to all booked acts. Please note that it is absolutely essential that you give us a firm bottom line quote for your fee - do not expect us to negotiate. Just give us a clear indication of the exact terms under which you would be willing to appear at the festival. All quotes should be inclusive of travel, we have no special deals with airlines or anything like that, so be sure that if you need your airfare paid it is included in your fee. If you are an amateur act, you're not too worried about how much you get paid, and you don't know how much to ask for, we suggest that you ask for enough to cover your petrol and expenses.

Accommodation and Travel. We will be offering free camping for artists and families (restricted to those acts who are booked for the whole weekend, not just for one day). Cottage accommodation on the festival site is strictly limited, and out-of-state performers will get priority. We provide ground transport between the airport and the festival site for out-of-state performers.

Partner tickets. As a general rule, we simply cannot afford to offer free tickets to partners and family members of performers (with the exception of acts containing children, when we offer a free ticket for an accompanying parent). We will offer additional tickets to artists at discounted prices, but these must be pre-purchased. If this is a major barrier to your application, then please email to discuss making partner tickets part of an overall fee package.

Genres and Styles of performance. This is a hard one! Broadly, the festival is part of the Australain folk festival movement, but no two people agree on exactly what that means. The core of the festival is tradition-based folk/roots music, which includes the various genres of "world music", Anglo-Celtic folk, contemporary acoustic singer/songwriter, a cappella, comedy and acoustic blues, performed "au naturel" with no pre-recorded accompaniment. We generally don't book contemporary electric rock/pop/rap acts, purely classical ensembles or mainstream jazz acts, and we tend to avoid acts that use drum machines. But if you feel you cross over into any of the genres mentioned above don't be put off.

Deadline. The deadline for completed applications - INCLUDING SUPPORT MATERIALS or URL LINKS - is 30th SEPTEMBER 2008.

Email or online support material. We encourage the use of on-line support material in the form of links to MySpace sites, YouTube video, electron press kits or regular websites with sound clips and/or video. We can accept support material sent directly by email, but please note the following rules: please do not send email attachments larger than 1 MB in total size - strictly no MP3 sound clips, and photos as jpgs only, thanks. If your support material is available online there is no need to mail it to us as well.

The Umpires Decision is final, and we can't get into individual discussions about unsuccessful applications - sorry, we just haven't go the resources to spare.

We expect to be heavily oversubscribed as usual for 2009, so it is essential that your application be complete and timely. If you don't leave it until the last minute we really appreciate it. We offer the following suggestions to improve your chances:

1. Ensure that your demo materials reflect the performance you are offering - if you are a solo guitarist, please don't provide a heavily produced recording featuring a six piece band (or if that's all you have, consider providing a live recording as well).

2. Video of live performance is the preferred medium. We are happy to make use of on-line material - YouTube video or a website /MySpace site with video clips is fine. Get the best stuff up front! If you want to mail us something, make it Standard DVD format or MPG, AVI or WMV on a Windows compatible CD please.

3. On promo materials again, please don't send us a huge envelope full. One or two pages should be enough, and we don't need this if it's already on your website or MySpace site. Genuine reviews of your performance and good representative demos are the best thing to send. Solicited letters of recommendation don't mean as much as people think they do.

4. Please provide a GOOD photo. We need clear, close-up, well-exposed images that say something about your act and make people (and us!) want to see it. Electronic formats are fine, but should be 2 megapixels at bare minimum (that's about 1500x1300 pixels). The resolution doesn't matter, it's the number of pixels that counts. We prefer you to send them as email attachments in jpg format, but Windows-compatible CD-ROM is OK too.

5. Please DON'T send us email attachments in any other format than PDF, jpg or htm - they will not be opened if you do. Please DON'T email video, or images bigger than 2MB.

6. Offer something new and interesting. We are always on the lookout for interesting presentations, workshops teaching a valuable skill, shows with unusual visual appeal, and anything that pushes the envelope a bit. Applying for concert spots only is the hardest way to get on the program.

7. As ever, we are on the lookout for good kids' and youth shows. If you can offer something that appeals to teenagers, great, particularly if it is participative.

8. Please note that in view of the huge demand for performance slots, we have a general policy of not booking acts for more than two years out of three. If you played the last two years, we might well choose to give you a rest this time around to give others a chance. This rule isn't carved in stone, and we do make exceptions in cases where an established act fits a hard-to-fill niche, or comes up with something really new and inventive. If your act played in 2007 and 2008, you might want to drop us a line before going ahead with your application.

9. As we said at the top, please don't make ambit claims, we do not negotiate on your asking fee. Like most of the major festivals these days, we assume that your quote is your genuine minimum requirement for playing at the festival. Likewise, we really can't advise you on what your asking price should be, that's for you to decide. If we make a suggestion that can easily be mistaken for an offer, and we are anxious to avoid these kinds of misunderstandings. To give you an idea, we anticipate that the discretionary artists budget for the entire festival will be somewhere in the vicinity of $90,000, which doesn't go all that far!

10. The theme of the 2009 festival will be "Roots and Branches ", relating to innovative performances in traditional styles, so if you can address this theme in an interesting way it will help your chances. It won't guarantee automatic success though, as all the usual criteria will still apply.

That about does it, thanks for reading this far. Sorry to be so dictatorial about it, but it saves everyone's precious time and effort if we are as clear as possible. We greatly appreciate you taking the time and effort to apply to play at our festival, and we look forward to hearing from you!

Typically, we book about one in every four or five interstate acts that apply each year. This is largely a result of the high cost of air travel to WA. In each of the last few years we have had to decline about 100 interstate applications, which represented a large amount of wasted effort and postage costs. In view of the large number of applications for the small number of available slots, we are changing our policy this year, and most interstate acts will be booked by invitation.

We don't want to close the door completely to good acts we may not have had the chance to see, so there is still the option of registering an expression of interest. To do this, we ask you to fill in the application form as usual, but to restrict it to the following essential information: contact information (specifically email), type of act, website/MySpace, and most importantly your quote for a DELIVERED fee (that is, assuming that we will not pay additional travel costs). If we decide we are interested, we will get back to you and request additional information. Please don't send us CDs or other material unless we ask.

International acts considering applying to play at Fairbridge should be aware that we can only consider your application if you are represented by an agent in Australia. Your agent would be responsible for organising your work permit, your tax file number, Australian Business Number and other necessities. Unfortunately these procedures have become much more complex recently, and we are no longer able to handle this ourselves. We are also not in a position to pay international airfares. We love having quality international folk/roots acts at our festival, but we can only do this as part of a broader Australian tour managed from within Australia.

For further information, please visit the Australian Folk Directory on the Folk Alliance of Australia website.