Did this go well?
Well it was a bit of a mixture really! The wind was so strong that the market people decided the stalls on Norwood Road were unsafe at about 11:00 and some of them including ours were moved into our estate. We ended up with our stall directly outside the space, with Toby’s TV on a workbench outside playing a video of the space being built. Inside we had David’s cool LED toys on display and the Ultimaker & laser cutter working. Which was great for us as nobody had to hang around outside on the stand half way down the road waiting to talk to someone. We had a steady trickle of visitors through the day, most were people who had never heard of us and several who seemed interested in joining.
I’m not sure the event was a great success overall, the wind was atrocious and it wasn’t very busy. The other stall holders ended up either abandoning the whole thing or moving again to in front of the station. Some more rubbish got cleared up from outside near the entrance to the estate which was a bonus. So I think on the whole, because of the way it ended up, this one was worth doing, but I’m not sure we would want to do it again with a stall quite far from the space that needed to be manned all day. Probably would better & easier for next time they have a big fair to just tart up the space, open the door & put up a welcome sign and see who shows up.
Thoughts from other people who were there?
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Definitely a mixed bag. The fair was possibly flawed in its plans for Norwood Road in the first place, and then the crazy winds pretty much knackered any chance of nice market feeling or footfall outside of the normal market area up by the station.
All that said, the space looked really good and made an impression on the limited footfall there was. Mostly I’m super impressed with @SarahJ and @Eileen for getting it all together. Props to you two. Also nice to see @david bring his toys down, including the LED umbrella last seen at a µMeet.
Thanks also to @Dermot for being there the whole day when most of us couldn’t be, and along with @peter_hellyer getting things 3D printing and laser cutting.
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I’d say it worked very well for us, but not a good day at all for stall-holders. We had a very good level of footfall, and connected with locals who hadn’t heard of us before. At least three people were very keen to sign up, but didn’t have their bank details.
So we should give ourselves a pat on the back.
Very nice to see the Bath Factory Estate full of stalls: a vision of the future? A tonne of potential: could be a market, or could consider holding our own events?
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Maybe we should have a mechanism in the membership system for ‘sign up right now and you’ll get an email pestering you for your bank details straight away’ at least that way we won’t run into the absent hearts absent minds problem.