Chocolate, Not Pants, In York

by Rob Street 

Spring is upon us and the "Kaskade" magazine calendar lists 150 festivals throughout Europe before the European in Torino in September. A large proportion of these will be in the UK, and most of these are one-day events, rather than a full weekenders. Of the 40 listed for the UK, at least 35 start and finish on the same day, lasting only 12 hours or less. A juggler in London can reach three-quarters of these in a three-hour drive. Obviously the increased population density in Europe makes one-dayers more feasible, but there are other challenges. 

For a few years, people in York have been thinking about running a convention. Last year I decided we would. I booked the rooms and started the ball rolling. It was that easy, partly because a lot of thought had already been put in by others, and partly because of the help I received with the rest of the organizing. My co-organizer Rob Stone and I built a small but dedicated and efficient team. Between us, we organized everything, including publicity, show, workshops, juggling space, insurance, everything. When it came to convention time, people arrived in droves, and the event was a great success, largely due to the team that helped on the day. 

At this point I should explain that although there is usually no company sponsorship, this style of convention is not run at a loss, but aims to break even. We've heard a lot about the impracticality of convention funding, but thankfully, we've ignored it. There are a number of tricks you can use to save money. 

1: Be part off / affiliated to a university juggling club. Now when you book your juggling halls you will either have to pay nothing, or be heavily discounted. We got ours for nothing. Lancaster, another popular one-day convention, have to pay for theirs, which is slightly larger than ours. As a result of all this, we are able to charge comparatively little.

2: Have a raffle. Get vendors at the convention to pay you in prizes. Try to get a juggling supplier to sponsor you and donate some prizes, particularly if they're local. (Thanks, Beard!) 

3: You have to pay the performers you have in the show. This was our main expense in York, so we try to limit it. Most performers, since it is a juggling convention rather than a professional gig, will be happy to perform for a reduced rate, with an agreement that they will be paid more if the expected numbers arrive. We have had the York convention twice, and on both occasions we agreed to pay the performers frugally, but ended up paying normal amounts when a lot of people showed up. 

There you have it, three steps to running a cost efficient convention! It pleases me that we had some money left over from the first one, and were able to donate $150 to the British juggling convention, which was suffering financial problems. 

I understand that in some areas there may not be enough jugglers concentrated nearby. In this case, you're probably not going to be able to hold a convention. However, in most cities, I would imagine there would be no problem at all, when you bear in mind that 100 people will make a reasonable convention, and 200 will make a great one. 

Our inaugural event had been a success, so we were set for YJC2. Most of the original team had left York, but fortunately myself and Rob were still around. We started in September, booking rooms, thinking about acts for a show, initial publicity. Our pre-convention team was as excellent as last year, although we were a little tardy about getting everything done in time, and were a little worried that no one would come because they hadn't heard about it. In the end the publicity did go out in time, and about 200 people showed up. The press were there, and our gamble of doing t- shirts paid off, as we sold all the ones we had made. 

It seems that the success of an event like this depends on two things: good pre- planning and excellent on-the-day control. 

We had some problems in pre-production like two of our acts dropping out at the last minute, publicity delays, and not knowing if we were properly insured until three days before the convention. Fortunately, all this worked out. 

Let me tell you how hard my helpers worked. The day before the convention, a dozen people turned out to move furniture and put up signs. On the day, there was never any shortage of people to staff the front desk, the PA, sell raffle tickets, run errands, or solve any of the little problems that in the end never arose. This is one of the main reasons the York juggling convention seems to run so smoothly. 

The show. In line with convention tradition, we opened the show with our version of a Renegade stage - a pre-arranged open stage. This way anyone who felt like showing off or trying a new routine could do it in a receptive environment, and at the same time the organizers could compare and veto acts and keep the show to a sensible length. The open stage this year went well, but the best part of the show was after the break, as you would expect. We had Sam I Am's diabolo routine, and Feeding the Fish's amazing three person club passing routine. These guys have a lot of bottle performing a routine this hard - but I'm glad they did. Also performing were Cosmos, a UV passing team from York. 

Our theme: "It's chocolate, not pants" was a success. How could we lose when we gave away a free chocolate bar on entry?! Chocolate was available through the day, and given out as prizes in the games. Our games were chocolate, our raffle was chocolate, and our convention was chocolate, not pants. (pants = underpants in UKspeak). 

Everyone went away happy, and I think this includes my team. Everyone had a good convention.

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