said by scrubber
on Saturday, 9 January 2010, 3:33pm

The reason Wilde Ones did not tender, was because they were advised not to on legal grounds and the Pride organisation had not provided their office with the organisation's accounts, or any form of business plan for the next few years. I believe, owning a events business myself and looking at what has happened to the Big Chill for example, they made the right decision in terms of a vote of no confidence in a failing organisation - but still came up with a solid buisiness proposal to go forward.

I would be very sceptical of any buisiness who engaged in a dubious tender document as the only reasonable explanation for doing so would be that your own company was struggling and you were willing to expose yourself to risk because your company has nothing to lose by doing so. I believe Gscene has pretty well confirmed this is the case with Fisher Productions who traded at a massive loss of £500,000 in their last declared accounting period. None of this is speculative - all the information is available to the public.

said by wildeones
on Saturday, 9 January 2010, 6:37pm

Responding to the comment above:

Choosing not to tender for the production at Brighton Pride was not a decision Wilde Ones took lightly, certainly not after its involvement over the last 14 years. Wilde Ones has always been highly supportive of Brighton Pride and agreed to underwrite the event to the tune of £25k in 2001 and 2002, though fortunately this wasn’t ultimately required.

Wilde Ones introduced the concept of free stalls in the community village to local LGBT groups, and has consistently provided this service as well as subsidising the community village as a whole to other charity and community groups. We have always worked with Brighton Pride to offer further benefits and income to the organisation wherever possible.

When Pride announced that it had a potential £50k deficit in August this wasn’t a particular surprise to Wilde Ones. Financial problems had been ongoing since October the previous year, despite park costs remaining fairly constant. (Please read this open letter to Gscene for background information)

Pride sent out its tender documents at the end of September, based on the event as it happened in 2009, with tenders due in at the end of October. For those not aware, the production contract consists of two elements:
1. providing the infrastructure
2. providing the market and catering concessions.

For the first element, the contractor would charge Pride a fee.
For the second element the contractor would pay Pride a fee.
Consequently this means that the contractor is also a business investor into the event.

Aware of Pride’s highly publicised financial problem, the first thing Wilde Ones did was to request copies of Pride’s last thee year’s accounts and business plan for the coming year. If we were to invest in the event, we wanted to know what the overall financial situation of that organisation was, and what its plans were for the future.

We didn’t receive a response. (Three weeks later we were told that the accounts were available to download from the charity commission’s website.)

About a week later in early October, Pride had its first public meeting. Shortly after this Pride issued a press release stating that it had a strategy day later in October at which there would be a root and branch rethink about Pride:
“Nothing will be off limits, including whether Pride remains a free event, if the main park event is scaled down or even abandoned all together.”

This information was not relayed to any of the tenderers. Given that Pride were expecting potential contractors to tender for the event, what exactly were they meant to tender for? The event as was in 2009? A scaled down event? Or no event at all?

Tenderers were being asked to invest in an event, yet Pride had not decided what that event would actually be.

On the day that the tenders were due in, Pride announced that it was going to downscale the event by removing all the elements that made it the great event it was.

Ultimately Pride had completely changed the whole nature of the event. How was a tenderer supposed to work out what it would pay Pride for the concessions now that the event was a shadow of its previous self?

Anybody who had submitted a tender was tendering for an event that was non-existent. But of course, the tenderers had not officially been informed of all these goings on, so only if you kept up with the press reports would you be aware of this particular development.

As for the actual tender document itself, this document had grown from 10 to 70 pages long. We have spoken to many colleagues in the event industry who are utterly bemused by such an unwieldy document, that is more relevant to building a £3billion hospital than staging a festival in a park.

The legal advice we received about the document was as follows:

“The document... is completely unbalanced and one-sided. The Tenderer is expected to accept virtually absolute and total unlimited liability on the one hand but Pride, on the other, and to a most unreasonable degree, does not agree to accept any liability at all.”

In one clause Pride purported to exclude liability even if they were negligent. There were also contradictions in the Tender document as well as innumerable errors, (or what were assumed to be errors) - on one page alone there were four typographical errors.

Though the document appeared to be professionally well-drafted it was of a very shoddy nature, and all these things combined meant that we were advised to stay well away.

As we said at the beginning it was not a light decision not to tender. But given

1. Pride’s publicised financial position
2. It’s lack of communication with us and other tenderers with regard to the truth about the event, and lack of transparency about its own financial situation (bearing in mind we would be investors in it)
3. The fact that it was so out of touch with its customers by decimating the event
4.The one sided nature of the tender document

the only possible decision was not to tender.

This was purely a business decision based on all the information we had collated. We did not feel that Pride would be able to stage the event, and that even if we won the contract we would be in an extremely precarious position, as Pride had no clear plans on how it would fund itself through the forthcoming year.

We had already been aware that Brighton Beachdown festival had collapsed in 2009, and did not want to be involved with a similar situation in 2010. We stand by that decision.

Wilde Ones

said by DollyCarter
on Monday, 11 January 2010, 6:23pm

Can somebody please explain exactly what the Pride / Fisher proposal actually is?

From what I understand reading the press articles, after the public meeting in November Pride made a hasty u-turn and said that they would reconsider the cabaret tent and main dance tent – but only if an external party was prepared to pay for it. There has also been no mention of replacing the other dance tents, the Calabash tent, the Women’s Tent, Line Dancing tent etc.

However, the article above implies that the two proposals – Pride/Fisher and Wilde Ones - are putting essentially the same event on. At this stage this is clearly not the case, yet since the general public are not aware of the fact, anybody visiting this site would think that it is a simple case of choosing between two organisations putting on the same event.

said by hunkygardener
on Wednesday, 13 January 2010, 11:14am

I am sure many avenues have been explored with regard to income generation but as one of the best gay festival/events still going I can't be the only person who feels this event should carry an entry/cover charge.

I know it is a totally different event but if you look at how the Annual Firework display at Alexandra Palace is organised they have hundreds of volunteers with collecting buckets and people generally give £3 to £5 - and although most people could see the fireworks from the surrounding areas people still give.

At last year's Brighton Pride the weather was terrible but I was unable to find anyone to give £10 to, as I do most years .

I am also sure that policing and securing the event and provision of toilets is a heavy item of expenditure and again this should be chargeable.

As a community the gay men and lesbians I know (many of whom have a large disposable income to spend on holidays, entertaining, eating and drinking out) would be willing to make donations or pay an entry fee of £10. Concessions should always be available so that the events is open to all regardless of income or status.

I do not understand all the issues involved here so please forgive my simplistic approach but the Income issue must come first - and once the budget has been set out it's up to organisers and charities to allocate expenditure within the budget. This should be easy to predict. Number of visitors attending for the last ten years, averaged out to take account of weather conditions etc. times £10 per person (to include one free drink maybe?) and hey presto.

Or am I being a little too simplistic and naive here?

said anonymously
on Thursday, 14 January 2010, 3:12pm

In what way did London Pride fail?

said by jimmegee
on Monday, 18 January 2010, 5:03pm

This is all very depressing. In-fighting, poor management, accusations flying: this is exactly how Pride in London went from being a large and pretty well-run annual festival to, well, pretty much nothing in a matter of years.

Brighton Pride has the potential to become as massive as Sydney Mardi Gras but last year showed one failing: an inability to force those attending to contribute towards increasing management costs.

Should Wilde Ones get the opportunity to run it along the very sensible lines it's proposing? Perhaps the more important question is, should the Pride board and directors that couldn't even get bucket collectors out into the streets last year before it started raining really be in charge again in 2010... One thing's for sure, we need to stop navel-gazing and get on with it. Pride 2010's only 7 months away. I'll be volunteering to help out in some way this year and suggest all those with something to say about what did or didn't happen last year do the same.

Come on, let's club together, not fight!

said by getdaggy
on Saturday, 13 February 2010, 1:32pm

Democratise Pride! Give Pride back to the city and its citizens!

Pride is like New Year. It will happen without a committee.

I don’t think we need an expensive parade and a temporary gay village created in Preston Park. Nor do we need sluggish hours spent watching self promoting organisations flaunt their corporate identities on floats.

In my humble opinion, the parade and the park event are now obsolete. If Pride (the organisation) didn’t exist, how would the city respond to Pride Week DIY style?

I imagine that this would create a week of abundant creativity, where city wide venues, promoters, charities, groups and individuals would respond and collaboration to enjoy the celebration.

The city would still be flooded with LGBT types, but this way, queer folk would have more choice about what they experience, and the Pride organisation could focus on fund-raising for support services & community projects for marginalised LGBT folk.

It would also demonstrate just how proud our city is, as non LGBT venues and organisations will have a chance to respond to the celebration, and cash in on the pink purse.

Andy Taylor