It seems a while ago since we held the Langford Arts Festival, but we can now report the final outcomes – now that we have the results of a few special commissions that resulted directly from LAF.
As we’ve reported before the Festival was a great success, both as an event for Langford but also in a financial sense. We sold over £25,000 worth of art, double what was sold at the 2019 LAF.
After covering all expenses we made a surplus of almost £8000 – the biggest contribution was from the commission we took on art sales, but with substantial contributions also from the LAF Café and from the LAF Quiz Night. We are as well very grateful to all our patrons and advertisers for their financial support.
The LAF Organising Committee decided to use part of the surplus for donations to the Fabric Fund of St Matthew’s (£3000 to help with the costs of church and churchyard maintenance, in appreciation of the magnificent space the church offers for the Festival)), and to St Christopher’s School (£1000 to help with the school’s Special Needs provision). For the moment the balance is being retained as a Development Fund for future Langford Arts Festivals. The plan is to hold the next LAF in the summer of 2023 – it was always intended as a biennial event.
After the success of the first LAF, for the 2021 event we incorporated the Langford Arts Festival as a distinct body, which allowed us to open a LAF bank account, set up card readers, and generally manage the quite complex financial matters of the Festival in a more efficient way.
For the 2021 LAF the Organising Committee members were Ginny Bushell, Mandy Scott, Louise Finlay-Wilson, Bo Potter, Denise Kemp, Jo Edwards, Sonia Kearns and myself. Before too long we will be beginning to think about and plan the next LAF in 2023. So if there is anyone who is keen to join the Organising Committee you would be very welcome to put your name forward to Ginny at virginia.bushell@gmail.com
Once again thank you to all those people who helped to set up and run the Festival in all its various aspects. It was a delightful Langford occasion.
Richard