How to organize a Street Festival
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To be as specific as possible, I’ll describe exactly what we did for the Street Festival in Bonn, Germany. The rough process should be applicable to any city.
I’ll also tell you what specific products/services we used. These are examples to make it as easy as possible for you. This post is not sponsored.
Deutsche Version dieses Artikels.
Assemble your team
We had a 7-people team of varying degree of involvement. We had 4 people in the core team. They did planning and preparation together. Additionally, 3 people were in the extended team and helped during the Street Festival itself (setting up, solving any problems, cleaning up, …).
I want to remind you that you as the initiator have the privilege and responsibility to will the Street Festival into existence. So, as in any leadership position, be energetic, decisive and positive!
Do the Street Festival
There are 6 steps to organizing a Street Festival:
- Decide on a time and place
- Work with the city
- Plan the Street Festival
- Inform your neighbors
- Do the Street Festival
- Wind down
Let’s get started!
1. Decide on a time and place
Your Street Fest will most likely be held in your street. Choose a quit location, somewhere where people would like to ‘be’ instead of ‘go through’. A cul-de-sac is perfect for this.
Choose a time, Saturdays are best (so you can rest on Sunday); in warm-weather season; with a time range of 4-5 hours. Less time might feel rushed, while more time makes it more likely you don’t get a critical mass of people, which you need to make it feel lively.
The end shouldn’t be too late or you’ll disturb your neighbors. In Germany you have to end any Street Festival at 10pm.
2. Work with the city
You’ll be using public space, and therefore will need your city’s approval. In my experience, cities are very welcoming. You are a citizen making your local community happy. They want you to succeed!
For example: Here’s the city page for Street Festival for my city of Bonn (in Germany). You have to fill out this form and prove your neighbors approve of the Street Festival by getting signatures. Here’s a simple form we used.
To get the signatures, you can either post the form on housedoors, or go door-to-door. I strongly suggest going door-to-door. People are not likely to sign impersonal forms. Especially if it’s the first Street Festival in the city.
It took us about 3-4 hours to visit ~100 flats and get ~30 signatures. Only 2 neighbors of refused to sign. (The others weren’t home.)
Next, you’ll need to buy an event insurance (German: Veranstaltungshaftpflicht) to make sure you’re covered if anything goes wrong. Be aware the insurance covers only a certain amount (eg up to 5 million €), with higher coverage costing more. Choose the coverage/price ratio you feel comfortable with. We went with 5€ million coverage for which we paid 112€.
The insurance we bought doesn’t exist anymore, so I can’t link to that. For Germans, just google ‘Veranstaltungshaftpflicht’. You’ll find many options.
Lastly, you need material to close off the relevant part of the street. Make sure it is clear to a driver that the street is closed (e.g. not only a note on the street but actual fences; in Germany: Absperrschranke). Ask a local moving company, if you can borrow this.
3. Plan the Street Festival
A good Street Festival is a (temporary) shared, cozy living room on the street. So it should have places to sit and chill, have foods & drinks, and some activities to do.
I suggest making a rough map of your festival. This is how ours looked like (left end: cul-de-sac):
Sitting space: Have enough sitting space, eg with chairs, beer benches, etc.
Activities: Make sure to have activities for every age group. For kids, we had sidewalk chalk and a bouncy castle. For adults we had chess, table soccer, and board games. For senior citizens, we had enough space to just sit and talk. Your city can help you find material for the fancier activities like the bouncy castle. The city of Bonn, for example, lets you borrow toys. Otherwise, ask local civic society (sports clubs, political parties, churches/mosques/…) or bars. Maybe they have something cool you can borrow.
Atmosphere: To make the street cozy, use decoration (we used decorative flags; German: Wimpelkette) and have ambient music (we had one large music box borrowed from a local musician).
Food: I suggest you tell your neighbors to bring some food. Most people are happy to bring something, so you’ll likely have too much rathen than too little.
Drinks: You either need to buy drinks yourself or hire a caterer. Caterers are more expensive but make the transport easier and they might lend you fridges. Buying yourself is cheaper, but a larger hassle and you need figure out if/how to cool drinks.
We hired a caterer, but next time, we’ll just do it ourselves.
In either case, negotiate that you buy on consignment, i.e. you only pay for the drinks you use up, and the caterer/supermarket takes back the rest.
Power: Ask a neighbor if you can use their power. Make sure to read the meter before and after festival, and reimburse your neighbor. Or negotiate beforehand that the power is their contribution to the Street Festival (and therefore you don’t expect them to donate money).
Restroom: You don’t need to get portable toilets. People can use their own restrooms.
4. Inform your neighbors
Inform your neighbors there will be a Street Festival. Your goal is to make them want to come, make them want to contribute, and ensure they park their cars elsewhere for the duration of the festival.
We had 5 touchpoints:
- 5 weeks before - Wrote with sidewalk onto the street that there will be a Street Festival (incl. date, time, our names, contact info)
- 4 weeks before – Went door-to-door to gather signatures, and invited excited neighbors into our team.
- 3 weeks before – Distributed flyers with time/location/what to bring/your contact into. One flyer per household. Here’s our flyer (original German / English), which you can use as a template.
- 1 week before – Wrote with sidewalk chalk onto street again (‘Next week Street Festival!’)
- 1 week before – Smaller flyer reminding neighbors to park their cars elsewhere. One flyer per house (not per household).
5. Do the Street Festival
It’s the day! Take 3 hours to do the preparation: close off the street, decorate the street, start the music, set up benches / chairs / …, set up any toys (eg bouncy castle). 3 hours seem long, but something will go wrong, so you want to have time to resolve that.
In our case, the planned power source didn’t work out and some neighbors hadn’t re-parked their cars, so we had so solve these issues. We also we needed more time than expected to set up the bouncy castle, as noone had done that before.
When the festival starts, people will take time to arrive. That’s normal. So don’t feel bad when the festival you worked so hard for feels empty in the beginning.
Keep up your spirit, and personally greet every new arrival. Many people will not know each other, so as the host, it’s your job to make them feel welcome and connect them with other people.
During the festival, have a donation box. Check it a couple of times to see if you can cover your costs. If not, speak up and ask everyone to donate. You’re doing this for your neighbors, so they’ll understand you don’t want to end up footing the bill by yourself.
6. Wind down
You’re done, congrats! Clean up the street (your neighbors will help you), return any equipment you borrowed, return drinks your bought on consignment.
Finances
Unless you have a sponsor, you’ll have to pay yourselves first and recover the costs via donations. We didn’t quite succeed: We paid 500€ and got 260€ in donations, so had to pay 240€ out of pocket. So next time wel’ll (i) buy the drinks ourselves and not rent fridges, (ii) spend less on flyers, and (iii) ask the organizing team if they want to split costs. With this, I assume you can get to break-even or to a cost of 20€ per person in the organizing team.
Here’s our cost-breakdown.
Risk-Planning
Medical: Have a first aid kit ready, and, if possible, have a designated medical emergency coordinator. We were lucky to have a doctor in our team who volunteered.
Weather: Sadly, you can’t to the Street Festival in bad weather. This is a risk you just have to bear. Doing the festival in warm-weather season should minimize this risk.
That’s it! Here’s a quick checklist for your convenience.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out at umer.hayat.adil@gmail.com . If you’re in Germany and need help organizing or getting funding, also do reach out! I’ll try my best to help.
You can do this!
- Umer