Christmas Fair - what a joke

[missy]

feeling quite disapointed. Convinced my husband that it would be a good idea for us to go to a Christmas gift Fair on sunday, thinking that it might be a good place to find presents that are home made and have a few hours out with the kids. it was half a sports hall, with 10 small tables, half of which were imported jewellery/ tat. a few charity tables that my son's bought from (cakes and tombolla) a mulledwine & mince pie table and a very poor excuse for santa. the only good thing was the band playing in the corner. the council had advertised the event in the local magazine they put out every 3 months telling residents what's going on.. i really thought there'd be more too it. so we then went to our local woods for a walk, which was about 10 minutes away and when we got there, there was a sign by the parking meter saying christmas fair this weekend.. that was 5 little gazebos.. how much effort advertising these events and then there's nothing too them!

there is a victorian fair on this sunday in town, so i'm hoping this one won't disapoint.


anyone else experience situations like these?

[chilitony]

start your own fair up, you cant please every one and its hard to organise N get loads of individuals together

[missy]

i'm on the school pta and i'm trying to get the other 5 ladies to agree to a craft fair.

i just thought that for all the effort someone's put in organising the event and advertising it that it would of been more.

[chilitony]

i put on my chili fest for the past 4 years and this year people said they would do things to help, but the day before they had not so, i had to sort it out and do it myself and on the day some of the people that said they were doing something did not, so the kids went without face painting. which was disapointing and they still came to the event.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4 ... =546593370
This year i grew 100 different chilie plants and did chilivodka, chili icecream, had had a chili eating tontest.
Every year there is a new champion, it is hard work, but the carity money raised go's up, this year i we raised 413.75p

[missy]

that's a great achievement. you clearly like chilie :D

when i tried the link it said "The page you requested cannot be displayed at the moment. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page. "

the pta that i'm on.. the 6 of us only started in september after the previous ladies decided to hang up their hats.
and so far alot of our ideas seem to be met with pleanty of no's which is very frustrating, especially as the money we raise goes to funding things in school like new books, trips etc..

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Our village is having its first stab at a Christmas fair this year (on December 19th, if anyone happens to be in the region )
and I think we're queitly optimistic. We've got about 30 stalls (plus inevitable bar) which for the most part are local producers of cheese, wine, duck-related products, honey, etc and a few craft things plus one from each school selling... actually I've no idea what they'll be selling.

We've got a new comité des fêtes in the village which are trying to get some new events in the calendar and they're charging only €2,50 per pitch as a sort of opening special offer.

It'll be interesting to see how it goes off.

[theabsinthefairy]

There is a Christmas fair in our local town this coming weekend, but having been to last year's all this is in fact is the lcoal farmer's market held on a Saturday and not a Wednesday, 2 stalls of locally grown veg, 2 or 3 local cheese sellers, a hat and glove man, a hunting jumpers and fluro dog collar man, and a local meat man. At least two stalls normally have a bit of tinsel up to show they are doing the Christmas market and not the normal local producers market.

We still go though :)

[Penny Lane]

I did a stall (read small infants school table) in a local school a couple of weeks ago. We were dissappointed as most of the 'punters' were more interested in stuffing their faces with burgers than buying handmade. There were a lot of stalls but most of it was imported tat

Our town is having a big fair in a couple of weeks, with an icerink of all things! It's an old mining town which has seen better days, a very long time ago so I am really surprised that they're putting this much on.
I'm not doing a stall on this one but I hope the sellers do well!

[Marmalady]

From the other side of the table -- as a stallholder that does regular farmers markets, food fairs etc -- at this time of year there are just too many Christmas Fairs to choose from, so you cannot expect every one to be bustling with good home-made food & crafts.
We do tend to be picky -- so if we attend one that has too many mass-produced tat or charity stalls then we don't go again the next year

Unfortunately all too often the customers buy by price not quality

Also bear in mind this year the weather has affected the ability of many traders to get to fairs - last week i had one farmers market where a few stalls were missing and public attendance was only half normal; one farmers market where only 2 stalls out of 30 managed to get there with very few public; one 2-day food fair and another farmers market cancelled altogether

[missy]

i get that about the weather at the one in the woods... it's a 10-15 minute drive and you only go there for the woods it's not on the way anywhere, but the first one was in a sports centre and had been advertised in the local council magazine and on the local radio.

[KathyLauren]

start your own fair up, you cant please every one and its hard to organise N get loads of individuals together

Not a bad idea, but you can't start there.

If you start with "I wanna start a fair" and then go looking for the talent, you end up with the pathetic excuses for fairs that are the problem. You have to have the talent lined up before you try to put it together to make a fair.

First, get to know the talented artists and crafts people in your area. It might take a couple of years. Sound them out on the idea of participating in a high-quality fair. Ask them if they would be willing to sit on a jury to determine whose work is good enough to get into the fair. If you get enough nibbles of interest from artists, then you can think about putting it all together as a fair. If you can't find enough talent to make it go, then call it quits.

Our local fair is acknowledged to be the best in the area. I know the main organizer quite well, and we have talked about how it runs. Those are some tips I learned from her.

[JessieMac]

We have been working at craft fairs for about 14 years and we are finding that more of them should be called cr*p fairs now,we design and make silver jewellery as Dennis is a self trained silversmith and it is so sad to see people taking the time to come and being faced with rows of stalls of imported rubbish passed off as handcrafted it puts people off going again and devalues the work of artisans and crafters.