Rhythms of the World (ROTW) 2015 was a great community event labelled by many as “the best year ever” and also as a “model event” by the local police authority. However, despite best ever pre-event sales and excellent promotion and press coverage, ticket sales to ‘pay-on-the-day’ festival-goers were lower than anticipated. Although in 2015 this means that ROTW report a shortfall against its budgeted income, the Trustees have agreements in place with suppliers with the ultimate goal of paying them in full.
On Sunday 8th November the ROTW Trustees reviewed the charity’s position and agreed a strategy for success going forward. In 2016 ROTW will deliver an exciting programme of fundraising events that will ensure they are able to settle any outstanding invoices from the 2015 event, and celebrate the 25th anniversary of ROTW.
To mark its 25th Anniversary the plan is to take ROTW back to its roots with a series of smaller events held in and around Hitchin. This diverse range of events will be true to the spirit of ROTW with the aims of uniting diverse communities through music , the arts and food. Events will be community-focused, value for money, family-friendly, fun and safe.
The Trustees intend to ensure that the events will provide something for everyone, with the launch event taking place over the weekend of 23rd April at the Half Moon pub in Hitchin in the form of a beer festival and live music. Some events will involve an entry fee out of necessity, in order to ensure the events themselves raise funds for the charity.
Although there will be no large festival in 2016, the Trustees do hope to deliver a more traditional version of the festival in Hitchin in the future.
Chair of the Trustees, Amy Hopkins, said:
“Since the Comet announced the position of ROTW last Thursday, we’ve received many messages of support, as well as constructive criticism of our traditional ROTW annual festival and suggestions for how we could move forward. We are aware that not everyone who attends the ROTW festival is aware that ROTW itself is a charity, or that the ROTW team of volunteers deliver community-focused educational ‘outreach’ activities and events all year around. In celebration of our 25th anniversary, 2016 will see a programme of events that will help us to showcase the diversity of the arts in Hitchin, whilst at the same time staying true to the vision of the charity to unite diverse communities through music and the arts. We will announce details of the programme in early 2016, and will be calling for volunteers to help ROTW present an amazing year of events in Hitchin.
On behalf of the Trustees I would like to take this opportunity to thank the ROTW suppliers, sponsors and volunteers for their continued support. We would also like to thank the 17,000 people who came to the event in 2015. It’s clear that you love the annual festival as much as we do, and we hope you will join us at our ‘back to our roots’ events in 2016. A huge amount of love, sweat and tears goes into ROTW and we hugely appreciate the support we receive.”
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We are encouraging people who want to support Rhythms of the World in the short term to make a donation to the Charity. You can do this online at www.virginmoneygiving.com and entering “Rhythms of the World’ in the ‘Find a Charity’ box. The full URL is:
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/charity-web/charity/finalCharityHomepage.action?charityId=1007284
Donations can also be made through ‘Easyfundraising’, again, the link to our page is:
https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/rotw/
