We've received a number of suggestions over the years, and have recently had a whole lot more from our audience survey. A lot of them have been very useful and have gone into our planning for future years, but some have really good reasons why we can't or don't want to do them. Here are our responses to several that just keep coming back...

Suggestion: Move the date to August / It clashes with ---
There are local and national events happening just about every weekend throughout the summer and whichever weekend we choose it's likely to clash with something. The Beggars Fair has been on the second weekend in July for seventeen years - we'll need a really good reason to change it now.

Suggestion: Why not have a few stalls selling merchandise, food, soft drinks?
One of the Beggars Fair aims is "to promote community involvement and stimulate trade within Romsey". We don't feel it would stimulate trade to import festival stalls that would be in direct competition with local businesses. Stalls work well on a green field site with no other facilities, but in a town centre location like Romsey we'd like the extra business to go to local traders.

Suggestion: There should be a dance stage for the young people
Beggars Fair is about LIVE music. That's real people singing and playing musical instruments. Whilst we realise there's an argument for decks being a musical instrument in their own right, that's a different thing to just belting out Prodigy's latest. There is a stage in the park with an excellent PA rig just for young bands - please do get in touch with Romsey Youth Council to have an input in next year's event.

Suggestion: Please can you get Show of Hands to come?
Beggars Fair is about LOCAL live music. It's about professional and amateur acts sharing stages and demonstrating just how much really good live music goes on in the local area. It's not about bringing in talent from outside or attracting audiences from further away. If we had the money to afford a big name we'd actually choose to spend it on more and better local acts.

Suggestion: Higher profile acts - will encourage people to come along
Beggars Fair is running pretty much at capacity now. There aren't really any other venues to expand into, and we're already getting comments about how crowded it is. Our focus now is on how we can improve the quality of the music and the experience rather than about bringing in more audience.

Suggestion: Have more stages/venues
If you can find any other spaces for stages that don't involve stopping the traffic in Romsey we'd love to know about them! Likewise if there are any pubs in the town centre that aren't already Beggars Fair venues they must be magic ones that disappear when we go past...

Suggestion: It should be a whole weekend thing
Beggars Fair is run by a volunteer committee. As well as all the planning, done in our spare time over the whole year, we're on duty from Friday afternoon until Saturday midnight. We collapse on Sunday. When I put this suggestion to the team there was an anguished howl of "Nooooo!" from everyone. You want Sunday, you organise it!

Do you have any suggestions for future Beggars Fairs? Email us and let us know!