Keswick Mountain Festival 2007

[tendon]

Picked up from one of the mtb news sites, there is a hands-on adventure/mountain sports festival in Keswick next year, primarily aimed at promoting Keswick by offering a diverse range of come and try activities

Doesn't mention orienteering yet but, since Mrs H reckons our best marketing strap line is as an adventure sport, are we putting anything on for this?

http://www.keswickmountainfestival.co.uk

[Rookie]

the event website has this on it

The Mountain Festival is going to establish Keswick as the undisputed outdoor adventure capital of Britain

and a photo

Is this the new BOF President?

If so surely we can get some orienteering in it

[RJ]

WCOC are currently finding out how we might be able to work with the KMF. It is still a year away... but we have our eye on it.

If anyone has any ideas they would like to put forward please do.....

[RJ]

Well the week of the Festival.... there is actually a lot of orienteering being offered.... a LAMM taster on Skiddaw, and two orienteering events. Other groups are using the word 'orienteering' as they see it!

WCOC have organised for their Thursday evening event to be close by and will be ready for all comers. Will print maps to demand if required.

Saturday and we have Yellow/Orange/Lt Green type courses on parkland at the edge of Derwentwater. No idea how many will turn up, but we have broadcast it through our schools setup as well.

[jkjuggler]

Overall, I'd say the Keswick Mountain Festival gets the prize for low-key. I ran the mini-LAMM taster today, and had a great time, but there were apparently only three entries yesterday, although rather more today. I was expecting a bit more promotion going on in the town, but there was very little evidence there was a festival going on at all.

Purely by coincidence, we also drove past the WCOC event later in the day, but neither of us had the energy to run again after a 4 hour score!

I do recommend the mini-LAMM event to anyone around Keswick tomorrow. The course was good with a lot of possible routes, the terrain very runnable with some decent orienteering challenge, especially with the cloud down, and the prizes aren't bad either!

R.

[RJ]

Well.... you might say that the Keswick Mountain Festival was low key..... but judging from the 48 page glossy booklet with a couple of hundred entries/activities on offer, hardly low key. Depends on what you expect I suppose.

However, WCOC had two events available that week, both advertised in the booklet. But it illustrates the nature of the problem that our minority sport has in trying to get our message out there. We had worthwhile attendances at both events although only the Saturday event attracted new folk for a run around the parkland.

All we can do is keep pushing ourselves forward, advertising events, getting ourselves in the sports pages of the papers... etc. There isn't a quick fix for our sport... just to develop a strategy that is suitable for your club's environs and population mix, and keep it going long term, making changes as you assess the benefits and rewards of what you do.

We are competing against dozens of other sports, who are all as keen as us to increase their membership and participation. There are a lot of possibly 'interested' participants out there, but our profile is not significant enough to get to them. I'm not sure it has a lot to do with the generally understood image of 'map and compass and anorak'! We need to try harder and for longer. Those who we do attract generally stay with the sport. All those who try the sport in its new form with electronic timing and overprinted maps LOVE it! They come back for more. We need to TELL more people about ourselves.