Beer Festival co-founder Tom Canning writes
I don’t live in Bracknell anymore. In fact I haven’t for nearly 15 years, which coincidentally is the exact amount of time the Bracknell Ale & Cider Festival has been running.
I confess I don’t live that far away – the other side of Reading, but you might wonder why every year I pack up my car for a long weekend and head back home?
It comes down to people – it’s the people that mean even when I’m far away, I’ll talk positively about the town I grew up in, I’ll explain to people where it is instead of just “West of London”. Even as the Festival grows in different ways each year, I still see faces I recognise from the very first one (80 people at Bracknell Town FC huddled inside the old bar as the rain poured down outside).
I’ve been told the Festival we’ve created along with our friends Bracknell Rugby Football Club is relaxed, chilled even. Organised is another word – although believe me, sat here writing this four weeks out – I never quite feel like that!
But we have an incredible cast of volunteers, both our own friends and family and the members of Bracknell RFC who help us get this event on and raise £1000s for the club.
It’s hard, physical work at times. When it comes to beer, everything in the beer industry is heavy. It takes people working hard to put the event on, and with that comes an immense amount of satisfaction and team work. Pulling that first pint just after the gates open..
That’s why!
If you want to see how it all began – this is a brilliant picture gallery taking you through the first 12 years
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I’m often greeted with surprise when I tell people Bracknell has a Beer Festival. Then, when I explain the size of it, they are more often than not shocked. But every year, Bracknell never lets us down.
The hardest part of the whole thing remains sponsorship. The Festival brings in enough revenue to wash its face – but the sponsorship from banners, stage sponsorship – that’s what really helps us raise money for the club.
As someone who is comfortable in a crowded room, networking, standing up and speaking to the public, that sort of thing, I find picking up the phone incredibly difficult. It’s an anxiety, not seeing the person you are talking withs face – dare I say even a fear.
There was a really short period of time in the mid-2010s where you could just email businesses with what you were after and you’d often get a response either agreeing or saying no thanks. Quite rightly – for spam reasons, that is no longer particularly effective.
The myriad social platforms you can use to contact companies directly are often both automated responses and have pretty effective spam filters themselves.
This is where the Sponsor Raffle comes in. Partly to alleviate my fear of picking up the phone, I admit, but partly so that I can go into smaller businesses and have an offer that might be appealing to them.
I hope that at £50 – with the possibility of winning a package worth £1,000 (as that’s how much it costs us to print all the shorts at short notice), it is accessible.
I guess I’ll find out!
