Hey there, folks! This is a planning post for the Courtly Music Recital at next year’s Rowany Festival. (This message has also been shared in the Lochac Musicians and Performers Facebook group.) The Courtly Music Recital is an indoor event for period music and spoken word performances, which has been held each Festival for almost a decade now (time flies, doesn’t it?). It’s open to anyone who wants to perform, at any skill level, as long as the performance is under five minutes and suitable for a mixed-age audience. If you’re interested in performing at the recital, or attending as an audience member, please read on. At the most recent recital, I asked the people who were present for feedback about how the event had evolved over time, and how they would like it to evolve in future. The three main points that came up were: 1. Now that Sunday is FAT/RAT day, the recital should move to a different time so that it’s easier for people to attend. 2. We should advertise the recital more to encourage the general populace to come and watch. 3. We should try out inviting Royal and/or Baronial guests, so that the Recital has a higher profile and performers get more visibility. All of these are things I’m very willing to try out, but I want to make sure I’m hearing from people who WEREN’T present this year as well. Would it work to move the recital to another time - Monday morning, maybe, since there’s usually heavy war that day? Do we want to encourage a larger audience? And finally, do we want the more formal kind of activity that comes with having thrones in the room? If we did invite Royal/Baronial guests, I feel like a good way to handle it would be to book a two-hour timeslot, with the first hour for the formal part of the recital, and the second hour available for anyone who wasn’t comfortable performing before the Crown. That would also allow us to maybe have advance sign-ups, with early sign-ups getting first dibs on performance slots in the first hour, so that we could tell if we needed to seek out more performers in order to have a full program, while still having extra time available for people who decided to perform after getting to the event. But the question of HOW we manage having a potential Royal/Baronial presence is one that comes after WHETHER we should do that. So please, if you have thoughts on the three points above, as a potential performer or audience member at the recital, let me know! Yours in Service, Mistress Gwen verch David