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We’ve
reached the end of the PDM financial year, as it runs April to
March, so it’s time do the accounts.
PDM
Accounts Summary for 2010-11
Headlines are:
·
It’s
been a tough year with, we believe, the recession starting to bite.
This has resulted in a lower average audience number (even when
comparing like for like line ups from 2009-10) but with numbers
holding up for more established local bands.
·
We
have made a small profit on our standard PDM gigs.
·
Charity
donations have remained stable.
·
The
Rock & Metal stage at Luton Summer Festival was a great success
and one of the most popular events of the Festival. We expect to
repeat that again in 2011.
Here’s
the summary of standard PDM work only, which is not including the
charity shows.
Income
was £856.04.
Our income came from
gigs. There were 14 standard gigs in the year (down from 20 the
previous year).
Expenditure £823.31
This
is broken down as
follows:
Payments to bands - £611
Best of 2010 CD production - £99
Running costs £113.31
This
gives us a small profit for the year of £32.73
Other expenditure was the Charity donations (LMHR, Kids In Action,
Children in Need & The Pasque via LutonAid) where we paid out £304.16
but relevant income was only £121.49. The difference is because we
sponsored a stage at LutonAid again this year and rounded up some of
the donations to sensible amounts.
That there was an overall loss is not a bad thing as we carried a
profit in the bank into the year of £539.05.Overall we now have £414.02
in the bank.
We have had to be careful to meet the running costs PDM, which have
gone up in the year, but bear in mind that everyone running PDM does
so voluntarily. That there was only a £32 profit from standard gigs
shows that we’ve achieved this. As a consequence payment to bands
as a percentage of gig income has fallen from 74% in 2009-10 to 71%
in 2010-11. This is a direct result of lower audiences, as the
number of people we need through the door to cover those costs
remains the same, but a smaller audience means less money available
to pay bands. Adjusting the figures to compare this year and last
year like for like (as there were fewer gigs) there was a fall of
15% in the average audience per gig.
One
of the things we did to address this is to move from two gigs per
month to one gig per month for the first part of 2011 and putting
together stronger bills with at least one established local band
(rather than bills made up entirely of newer or less popular bands
where audience numbers are likely to be low). It’s early to
compare, but the figures for the two gigs in 2011 when compared to
the same period in 2011 show an increase in average audience numbers
up 80% to 42, compared
to the 2010-11 whole year average of 26 and the 2009-10 whole year
average of 39. It is early but this suggests that this policy may be
working and means that new bands are likely to be playing to a
larger audience than would otherwise be the case. As part of the
remit of PDM is to help new bands get seen by audiences this may be
an effective approach.
The
Future.
It’s fair to say that we have survived, rather than thrived in
2010-11 and how this develops into the rest of 2011 will be
monitored closely by the team. It is already obvious that we may
need to cut back on the charity work that we do, especially where a
show takes place on a day when we would otherwise have an income
generating show. This is unfortunate and is something that we hope
to be able to rectify in years to come. The annual Best of CD may
also be stopped as it is an expense where we have had very little
feedback from bands or audiences that it is something that is
valued. Any reduction in costs or increase in income makes more
money available to pay bands and will, hopefully, encourage
established bands to play for us.
We will also look at other funding streams, grants etc, which may
enable us to reduce the cost of the gigs to be able to better
compete with the pub venues that don’t charge for entry to gigs
and have access to Landlord or Brewery support.
The facilities, PA etc, at the Hat Factory are probably the best in
Luton and an objective for the rest of 2011 is to, once again, make
a PDM gig the first choice of new and established local bands.
It’s time to balance the Not For Profit ethos of PDM with a
tougher, more commercial, outlook to enable us to survive this down
time and come out of the other end stronger. We still want to do
things like a second shared single, run training for bands, support
local band compilations etc but there needs to be the money there to
do this. Raising those funds to add to the range of work we do has
to be the objective of PDM for 2011-12 or we will become just
another local promoter and we want more than that for us, and for
the bands and artists we work with.
Included within this is aiming to make playing a PDM gig a way to
access development opportunities, for example the Rock & Metal
Night at Luton Summer Festival and we’re
working with BBC Introducing to program some of the bands that have
played for us on the Main Stage at Luton Carnival later in 2011 with
their performance broadcast on BBC Three Counties.
Paul Curry
PDM
27th March 2011
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