Oerol Festival

If you take a ferry for two hours North West from the Dutch port of Harlingen you come to the island of Terschellings. The island is small (about one hour’s cycle ride from end to end) and 50% consists of sand dunes but it is home to a vibrant local community and a popular holiday destination for people of all ages. Since 1982 it has also been home to the Oerol Festival (Oerol is a local dialect word which roughly translates as ‘everywhere’ because the Festival takes place everywhere on the island) in the summer of each year. Around 50,000 people take the boat ride at some time during the three weeks of the festival to enjoy theatre, music, circus, street theatre and visual arts.

The Festival is a great success but its ambitions (high!) are restrained by its budgets (low!). In particular, they would love to put more money into productions designed specially for the Festival, but they simply cannot afford the financial risk. How can the Festival raise more money whilst maintaining the distinctive friendly and informal atmosphere which the visitors and islanders treasure?

DDA has been engaged to look at ways of raising funds from individuals, especially the visitors. Can the existing Friends Scheme be changed to bring more income? Is a new donation programme a good idea? Can major donors be found? We have just begun our work with the Festival and will investigate these and other possibilities.

“Like all arts organisations we have to think very carefully about ways of increasing our income. We want to be able to invest in our artistic future, not just react to events, so we would like to increase our income from all kinds of fundraising. David Dixon has helped us to review our Friends programme, asking us questions about its strategic value for marketing and fundraising and suggesting ways we could increase our income from individual donations from Friends and visitors. We have really appreciated David's experience and have enjoyed working with him.” — Janneke Staarink, Director of the Oerol Festival.