Booking form

[mrsmotherearth]

AS I am new to setting up a fair, could those of you are experienced please advise what my booking form should look like.

[AnnieAnna]

One of my favourite fairs is the Colchester Oyster Fayre. The organiser, is great and he has put everything on the website so I suggest you do a bit of industrial espionage and have a look http://www.oysterfayre.flyer.co.uk/index.html

He does ask us for a copy of our insurance certificates and gets us to fill in a health and safety thing but he very kindly gives us a dummy one to copy as us historical reenactors burst out laughing when anyone mentions the H & S words. (The gentle ones cook on fires, chop carrots with knives, and sew with very sharp pointy needles. The energetic play with shiney pointy things and make big bangs and charge about on horses and stuff.) Our risk assessments go along the lines of modern people might not realise tents need guy ropes to hold them up. They might trip over the really, really thick rope... (Oh sorry. I've got a bee buzzing in my bonnet...but please don't ask your crafters what is the risk of a woolen finger puppet!!!!!!!)

Your crafters will be really, really grateful if you can keep the application form to one page with decent sized writing and not 4 pages of weeny tiny writing and a million irrelevant boxes to tick.

Annie Anna wearing her annoying application form T shirt.

[wendy]

I agree with Annie. Keep it as simple as possible please, we have to fill in lots and lots of these if we do fairs most weekends.

I love it when I can book online, and send payment online too. If you have PayPal, your crafters can send payment via an email or a website button.

What I do hate is having to print my own booking form out, especially if it's several pages, wasting my ink and my paper, then having to post it back to the organiser.

Another crafter with an annoying app form T-shirt

[greannancrafts]

You would be amazed how many forms I get which do not tell me who to make cheque out to, or do not send receipts.

My pet hate is only allowing 1 hour for set up - have you ever seen 25 crafters trying to get in through one door to set up in an hour?

Jane

[AnnieAnna]

Yes receipts! What's with the never giving out receipts!

Something else the Oyster Fayre does is to send you a plan of where your pitch is and a how to get there map.

I know you can figure this out yourself and village halls are pretty easy to spot but I do worry about whether there is parking. Can I get my van in and out? Some school car parks are titchy! There is a school in Canterbury where I have to half block a one way street to unload, get the stuff into the caretaker's hands then park the van 3 blocks away.
(On the let's pick everything back up journey I couldn't find the way back into the one way street and drove all the way round Canterbury's ring road until I hit the way I had originally come in and retraced the route by memory. There was another one - Romford way - where I had got to the wrong side of the building and couldn't see how to get to the other side. I was nearly in tears with that one. And I was late. And the Margate school where I couldn't find the way in and was escorted by a fire engine. I still have trouble and I've been there 4 times.

AnnieAnna

[AnnieAnna]

All trying to get through one door -
it's good to have more than one door. See if you can open up side and back doors.
AnnieAnna