We were a bit shocked about the criticism we received about our payment structure for community participation at our festival.

As a community arts organisation, we work in our community every week supporting community music and our payment systems means that an 8 year old gets the same as someone who has been playing with their mates.

It is an invitation to take part in the festival and offering them a fee is a gesture of our respect to them, and a way for us to encourage them to continue in their artistic field.   For us, this is a showcase of our year-round work alongside our talented community here in Dumfries & Galloway.

To be clear, this is for our free community stages which will form part of Dumfries Carnival which is a free weekend for children and families.  We won’t make any financial gain from this showcase.

Each individual community performer gets £90 worth of tickets as well as a complimentary drinks token worth £10.   Each group gets an additional £50 for the expense of getting here.

The ‘contra’ system, or the ‘play for tickets’ model is in use at lots of other festivals across the UK and for all music festivals in Dumfries & Galloway.

Our programme isn’t publicly funded and this initiative to present 30 acts on our community stage is funded by our members who donate to make it happen.

In previous cycles, we paid around £70 but offered less tickets.  The value hasn’t changed.   As our funding has decreased with no uplift, we have been forced to remodel the visit, which we believe we have done in good faith.

If the cash isn’t there for us to do it, then we cannot do it.

This doesn’t apply to professional musicians who are paid agreed union rates.

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