Where there's a will there's a wasted opportunity !!

It is four days since the historic Fresh on the Net Live - the festival for new music artists I organised with support from Team Freshnet and the wonderful people at Jacksons Lane Arts Centre. The event was a victory for the age-old adage of 'where there's a will ...'. It was delivered with no discernible budget after funding bids were rejected, in spite of positive feedback, by the usual suspects in the grant-funding sector for the arts.

There are already similar events taking place in Edinburgh (15th September) and Liverpool (November) and we will have a second London version probably as early as April 2020. As I told the head of one of the funding bodies earlier today - a good person who has never been short of constructive advice even if his organisation has yet to come through - we are not going away. I know he sees that as good news.

On the surface, it is easy to argue that we have proved it is possible to curate and organise an event of this kind without the need for grant funding. True. But we could put on a bigger, better and more ambitious event with a relatively modest injection of cash. Crucially the beneficiaries would be more music artists and more music lovers. The inaugural Fresh on the Net Live involved 16 bands and artists performing on 3 stages across 2 venues. With the funding we put in for, it could have been a lot more and we could have paid all the musicians better for their time. We could also have covered some travel expenses to bring artists from further afield.

As it was, mainly thanks to the good will of artists and their managers and to the unquantifiable value they place on Fresh on the Net as a resource and platform for new music, we still managed to have artists from Kent, Sussex, Bucks, Leicestershire, Nottingham, Lancashire and all corners of London. Nationality-wise we had England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy, Turkey, USA and Pakistan represented and those are just the ones we know about.

Alright, you might ask, so other than pointing out that I pulled off a great event in spite of the funding bodies, what is my point? That point is that when, according to the grant-making bodies themselves, there is nothing like as much money available as they would like to give out to deserving applicants, it seems bizarre to be informing a small not-for-profit with no means of raising revenue through other avenues that it is being overlooked as there are other, more established festivals in the pecking order. In other words, we are reserving our limited funds for those who are already making money and could probably more easily do without it!

Early in the planning for Fresh on the Net Live, I raised the potentially thorny issue of corporate sponsorship as a means of generating some income to fund payment of musicians, marketing etc. Tom Robinson, Fresh on the Net's founder, was very diplomatic, preferring to discuss such things over lunch rather than just shoot the idea down. But, once we were having that lunch, he politely made it clear that having the names and logos of corporates all over our festival would undermine the central ethos of Fresh on the Net and threaten the trust artists and fans have in its independence. He was absolutely right and thereafter I never gave such ideas a second thought.

However that does not mean Fresh on the Net has no potential to generate its own income and become self-sufficient in the longer term. For example, we could have used part of any funding to create merchandise which, in turn, could be sold both at the events themselves and online at the website. Provided it was clear that all proceeds would be invested in live music and not in paying members of the team, it would be entirely consistent with the Fresh on the Net ethos. A budget that allowed us to pay the artists instead of relying on the good will of Jacksons Lane Arts Centre would also have meant being able to hire more bands and artists, take care of any equipment hire issues and market the event more effectively. It would also have meant a good-hearted and charitable organisation with their own priorities to manage not having to take on all the financial risk (which they did).

All these things would make it more feasible to charge a modest ticket price (with discounted prices for advance sales as I currently operate with my Vanishing Point monthly at the Ivy House) which would still deliver great value and affordability to the fans but would allow the team to recoup some funds for investment in future events. At least then we could reduce the level of reliance on funding year on year while continuing to grow the Fresh on the Net Live brand (for want of a less troublesome term). No-one is more mindful than I am that 'Rome wasn't built in a day' but when I am working on funding applications I am trying to demonstrate that there is a longer term plan and we are not simply planning to throw money around and hope for the best!

I made all these points when I was a guest speaker at Festival Live during The Great Escape in Brighton several months ago. We need to have this debate now. Not least because, if the new Prime Minister gets his way and the UK departs the European Union with no deal at the end of October, the situation is going to get worse as millions of pounds in EU funding for the arts and creative industries will disappear, leaving a gaping hole in the support for growing hubs and projects, forcing some simply to close and intensifying the competition among the rest of us for a shrinking pot of gold.

The government could play a part in easing these problems by not only matching the existing EU funding post-Brexit (which ought to be possible if the Brexiteers were telling a modicom of truth with their notorious battle bus slogans) but committing more funds to the Arts Councils and not slashing local authorities' budgets that support arts activities in the regions and localities. But without wishing to jump on any political soap boxes it is a fact that Tory administrations over the past four decades have a particularly poor track record in all these areas. So you will, I am sure, forgive me for not holding my breath!

In the meantime the grant-funding bodies need to decide what they consider their role is. Is it to prop up long-established festivals year on year while closing the door to new and innovative ones? Alternatively is it to operate a level playing field and preferably to take some additional account of the limited opportunities for fundraising facing smaller not-for-profit organisations?

Britain has become festival-mad in recent years and the total number of music festivals, large and small, is currently increasing year on year. This inevitably places pressures on funding bodies as claims continue to pour in. There have to be high standards of scrutiny. This is also why it is essential that local government has a role in supporting community-related events.

For a festival like Fresh on the Net Live, however, there are no comparable events. No other festival is built upon the principle of highlighting artists who have been voted for by our discerning Listening Post audience. No other festival is being curated by people with direct access to and unique relationships with hundreds of aspiring new and emerging music artists, those mostly trying simultaneously to make the cut for our 100% independent weekly public vote and to get themselves onto Tom's BBC 6 Music Mixtape. On the one hand we are a national new music platform. But we are also a platform that has no income.

If you want to see new music genuinely supported by those responsible for assisting its development in the UK, ours is precisely the kind of event that should be receiving the backing. We are happy to sit down with funding bodies and work on ensuring we have credible plans in place to move towards longer term self-sufficiency. But like I said, Rome wasn't built in a day. We could use some help. But we will soldier on with or without it. Like I also said, we are not going away!

Neil March is a moderator and reviews author for Fresh on the Net, organiser and curator of last weekend's inaugural Fresh on the Net Live and author of the book The Independent Music Sector (2019).