Welcome to the World Sideshow Festival, a 3 day event planned for Ballarat in May 2015.
Sideshow is best described as all the unusual acts that didn't quite fit into the circus.
Sideshow is where you will find the sword swallowers, the rubber men and women and pain proof wonder and other strange and unusual  human beings..
Over the last fifteen years sideshow has developed a depth and theatricality, it is now seen as an legitimate genre of circus, it is no longer as the name suggests a sideshow. It is becoming the main event.
My vision is to invite some of the world's  best sideshow artists to Australia to perform alongside some elite Australian artists and bring the art form to a whole new audience.
if the campaign is successful, one of the most famous of all sideshow performers, The Lizardman has agreed to make the trek from Texas to join us.
 We will also have the world tallest contortionist.
And the only man on the planet to perform Sword Swallowing and acrobatics at the same time


We will take over the Ballarat Mecanics institute and perform in their beautiful historic theatre, built in 1861 and recently restored to be a state of the art theatrical space.

Why Ballarat I hear you ask, well there are a few reasons.
1, it is close to Melbourne and Melb airport
2, Its a beautiful old gothic city, perfect for sideshow
3, Ballarat University have agreed to co produce the festival. The  Live production course will provide all the light and sound  
equipment we need and the students from the course will operate all the equipment. The monetary value of this support is estimated at $48,000
Also as a bonus, they will film each show from 4 broadcast quality cameras, the vision will be mixed live and broadcast over the internet using a pay per view system. Sideshow fans from all over the world can tune in.!
If you'd like to see all the artists involved have a look at the website here
World Sideshow Festival

PLEASE KEEP GIVING, i set the target low so it would be achieved but the total cost of the festival will be very close 35K. The funds raised with this campaign are only a fraction of the total but will nearly get us to the starting line.We still need to find another 9K before we start. Personally i have invested  just over 1.5K, in website design and hosting, venue deposits and grant writers. Once I earn more money it will also go straight into the festival for things like layout and printing of programs, artist ground transfers, production of merchandise, balance of Venue hire etc i estimate i will personally invest 3.5K in the project and that is everything i have got.
One of the greatest challenges with sideshow is actually convincing people they will love what they see, often people are a little scared of something new or unusual. . At the first World Sideshow Festival we want to invite a whole new audience to come along, so a large proportion of the funds raised will go to marketing. We plan to employ the same publicist as Circus Oz, the projected publicity and marketing budget is nearly 10K
.
10,00 posters 10,000 flyers and distribution       $1650
print ads in Beat, inpress, and local newspaper $1350
graphic design                                                       $500 
publicist                                                                  $5000
Total                                                                        $8,500
We need to spend this much so we can generate ticket sales, the money from the tickets will then pay the artists.
I am really hoping that this campaign achieves it target and more, if we go over, the excess will  go directly to the travel and accommodation costs of the artists.

I have been involved in hundreds of festivals around the world over the last twenty years and the common theme amongst the successful ones is they treat their artists well. When artist are well treated they go back into their community and tell their peers and colleagues. The World Sideshow Festival would like to become an annual event so its important to us to treat the artists properly.
 Some Ballarat Hotels and Motels are providing rooms for artists and crew as a sponsorship but we will still need to find
Artists Accom $2600
Artist Travel     $4600
Crew Travel     1000
Crew Accom     900
Of course there are many other costs in producing a festival, including but not limited to, artist fees,  administration, front of house staff, etc  they will all come out of the box office after the event and then if there is anything left over it will be put back into event for the next year. I am hoping that within a year this festival will become self sustainable.
If you are still reading at this point you are obviously interested in helping the WSF and i thank you for that.
The reason this campaign has come about is because the World Sideshow Festival was rejected by two government arts funding bodies, they said our applications were very strong but we relied too much on government funding for the success of the project.
I don't get it, i thought that's what funding was for, to ensure success of  brave new projects. So if the government won't help i am hoping  you will. 

I dont really forsee too many challenges. If the campaign is successful and we can get the publicist everything will be fine.
The first challenge i see is engaging the local audience, people will travel from Melbourne to be part of the event, the challenge is letting the  Ballarat locals know a world class event is happening in their town.
That's why we hope to employ one of the best publicists in the business.
Another challenge is letting people  know we want this festival to grow. Maybe next time we can tour it, maybe we can extend it.
We have a long term vision, and we want to convince others that we are here to stay.
That's about it, I'd like to think that another problem might be that we get too much interest and we have to turn people away, I'd love to think that, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.........