Background

 I didn’t get a suitable venue / timeslot for Edinburgh 2016 so I booked myself into a bunch of other comedy festivals and essentially a tour [full details here]. I only did one show at this festival. 

Aims

•  To try a new “smaller” comedy festival.
• To gain a bit of an audience in a new city
• To break even.
• To meet some of the local comedians and learn more about the scene in Bath.
• To maybe get a podcast with the organisers.
• To (try) and do some spots on other shows.

Prep

• Much like with Leicester the biggest cost was going to be a place to stay so I called in a favour from Geoff Whitting who let me crash on his sofa which saved me some money.
• I booked into a “best of the Fringe” show the night before my show as a promotional spot to get people to come down and watch my show. I made sure I did material from my new show and not the current one on this slot so if people came to see the show from this spot they wouldn’t feel shortchanged.

Marketing

•  With my show registration I got a listing in the Fringe programme which is where 40% of my audience discovered the show. The rest came because I told them about it in the hour before the show. 
• I also Tweeted about the show and shared posts in relevant Facebook groups etc. 

Costs

Thing	Cost
Show registration	£50
Food	£21
Travel (petrol)	£25
Total	£96

Bucket 

£59.10. 20 people in the audience (the room could hold a max of 45) 

Profit / Loss

-£36.90

Things I’ve learned

•  The local paper is a weekly publication so I need to contact them ahead of time next year.
• Bath is small but the festival venues seem quite spread out.
• Not everyone knows a festival is happening so you sometimes have to explain to people that there’s a Fringe happening when “flyering”.
• People don’t really flyer. By “flyering” I mean going around the venue the hour before the show and telling people what the show is about.
• People don’t really do posters. There was almost none in my venue.

The results

• 7 new email addresses on my newsletter.
• Had a really lovely open spot the night before which got me seen by a big promoter.
• Met some awesome local comedians and a potential spot sorted for the future. 
• Nick Steele (the festival organiser) is up for a podcast, but I didn’t get it done during the weekend I was there.

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