No Frank Zappa Festival next year

Our attempt to get funding for a Frank Zappa Festival in Cannon Hill Parknext year has failed see e-mail below

The L'Esprit Manouche Team of Dave Alexander and Berni Good had put in a bidfor funding - I had sent a letter of support. The Festival had the supportof the Zappa family, who would have played at the Festival. Ex-members ofthe Mothers of Invention would also have played. The idea of the festivalwas to rival the massive Zappanale Festival in Germany.

Councillor Martin Mullaney
(0121) 689 4372

----- Original Message ----- From: <Val_Birchall@birmingham.gov.uk>To: <info@lespritmanouche.com>Cc: <sophia.tarr@birmingham.gov.uk>; <mullaney3@blueyonder.co.uk>Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 10:22 AM

Subject: Urban Fusion

Dear Berni & Dave

I am sorry to have to let you know that the Urban Fusion panel turned downyour proposal for the Zappa Festival.

The main reasons for this are set out below.
The festival was heavily reliant on the income from ticket sales of 10,000 at £25 each which the panel felt was unrealistic
The panel was concerned the project could jeopardise Urban Fusion funding from AWM if the output targets were not met - this would leave BCC open to risk of not being able to draw down the funding for this and other projects in the programme
The budget is heavily reliant on income £250K from ticket sales but does not take into account the payment of VAT on ticket sales, which would impact significantly on the total income
The panel felt the project was not sufficiently "Birmingham specific"
The overall budget is £370K with only 20k confirmed at this stage and box office and merchandising income a risk

The panel comprised the Urban Fusion funders (Arts Council England and Advantage West Midlands), Birmingham City Council, Marketing Birmingham, Audiences Central and two independent advisers.

We had 107 proposals and you did very well to make the shortlist of 28 as genuinely about 80 of the projects proposed were high quality, good artistic ideas which could have benefited the city, were there funds available to support them all. I realise this will be disappointing but it simply was not possible to fund everything, and projects had to be selected for their ability to meet the funding criteria.

Best wishes
Val