Feedback on St Matthew's Festival

Thankyou everyone who took part in our Festival evaluation exercise and filled in the feedback questionnaire. Here's what YOU thought of the Festival:

How did the Festival events go?

All events scored either 4 (good) or 5 (great!) for enjoyability. The highest rated were The Rumour concert, the Party on the Hill and Open Air Worship, Bell Ringing and Heritage Tours. Highest rated of all was the Barn Dance, which everyone without exception rated great!

So on average there were no disappointments with the events. Behind the figures though lay some frustrations with the concluding service on Back to Church Sunday, which some thought was too long and tried to cover too much ground. I hope this will be addressed next time.

One person commented that the Festival brought her to St Matthew's, where she has attended since. Another individual comment was that we should have more regular social events.

The programme:

The programme was felt to be about right. One commentator suggested that, if the Festival was too energy-consuming,  we could have a mini-Festival - a weekend with a social event, a Party on the Hill style event and a special Welcome to Church service.

Did we achieve our goals? 

There were quite a lot of don't knows with this which suggests we were not too successful in communicating what our goals were. Others felt they were good goals but needed to be worked out in a long term strategy, not just a single Festival. Many wished to see more community involvement.

Should we have a Festival again?

No-one said never! More thought it should be occasional than thought we should do it every year. In addition to the existing committee members, seven people said they would help in future (although one didn't give us their name!).

Ideas for any new events or activities included a Christian comedian, more work with schools and groups who use our Centre, chamber music, traditional jazz,  and running races!

In Conclusion:

People clearly enjoyed the Festival, thought it was worthwhile and are very open to doing it again. However there are things we could do better, particularly shortening and focussing the final service and reducing the sheer volume of activities to a more manageable. Good ideas for the future include perhaps having a weekend long mini-Festival, certainly running more social events, involving the community in fresh ways, and thoughts about some of the activities we could include. It was very heartening to see people volunteering to come forward and give their time to make it happen.