Tamworth Country Music Festival

Hi there, (no swear words here. I tip my hat to the people who organise this festival) Great festival but I feel you need to start putting strategies in place to cope with the ever increasing numbers. I have spoken with a lot of people at various clubs
and they are starting to get turned off with attending Tamworth. Sadly it's starting to get a reputation of overcrowded, no accomodation and only for the big end of town. Here's some of my thoughts and common threads I'm hearing about Tamworth. Think about
where you want to be in 10 years time and how the town is going to cope with that. Areas that need addressing; 1. Accomodation - near impossible to secure any sort of accomodation unless you are extremely early or have personal contacts. It's difficult to
search for accomodation. Consider a more consolidated website that handles all accomodation available. A one stop shop concept. Consider approaching properties in close proximty to town to set up additional camping facilties. The current accomodation sites
are filled way beyond capacity. A large number of accomodation providers know that there is a huge demand verses supply imbalance and get away with charging extremely over inflated prices. 2. Opportunities for Amateur Performers. We know this is the festival
for the big end of town performers,(which is great) but a large number of festival attendees are also amateur musicians and performers and would love the opportunity to perform. Currently it appears that buskers/all performers have to make private arrangements
with individual businesses and there is limited room in the CBD. You basically have to know someone to have that opportunity., and I'm told lots of money changes hand in some cases. A couple of venues with decent size stages where amateurs can book themselves
into a 15 or 20 min slot to perform would be awesome. Lefy Fahey had done this at the cricket ground previously but unsure if he is doing this in 2012. Hugely successful where he had a stage set up at the cricket grounds and humble amateurs could perform at
night to the 300+ camping crowd. A few more of these spread throughout the festival would be really good and give everyone that feeling of inclusion and socalising opportunities. Some talent quests that are not age biased would also be a welcome concept. There
are people in their 40s and beyond that also have talent. 3. Free events. Some of these events were so popular that their attendance was well beyond capacity. This led to nasty behaviour of some individuals (swearing, threats, stealing seats, pushing in etc)
Should request that the hosts of these events (mainly Pubs) have some sort of system in place to limit the numbers to a realistic capacity. Eg; Issue tickets to customers who purchased a meal at their venue. Run a ballard - 1st in first serve. Maybe a gold
coin entry (to go to charity) etc... Anyway these are my thoughts and collective thoughts of a number of people who have attended Tamworth in previous years. I wish you all the best for a great festival in 2012. Cheers