OxJam Music Festival 2012

Last summer I had such an amazing time helping my sister to organise a music festival at one of the pubs in our village. Our aim was to raise money for charity and we decided to get involved with OxJam. OxJam is organised by Oxfam every year, the idea being that people around the UK organise their own local music events to promote local music talent and predominantly to raise money for Oxfam. Since the first Oxjam in 2006, more than 40,000 musicians have played to over 800,000 people at around 3,000 Oxjam events nationwide. Oxjam has raised more than £1.5 million in total for Oxfam: enough to buy 13,000 emergency shelters, 60,000 goats or 900 classrooms, which is pretty staggering really and it's amazing to know that we've been a part of that. In the end around 500 people turned up to our event which was a lot more than we were expecting and we managed to raise £1300.     

Let me tell you, organising an event entirely for free is not an easy task. At the beginning we were wary that performers may not be interested in performing for free but thankfully most of the people we contacted were really enthusiastic and willing to get involved. A lot of the success of the day was down to the amazing music talent we had playing throughout the day.

Another obstacle we had to over come was providing most of the sound and stage  equipment for performers. Sound equipment is expensive to rent so you can imagine with zero budget we weren't holding out much hope. But yet again we were pleasantly surprised at the generosity of local businesses wanting to help us out. It's so great to know that people are willing to do what they can to help you out.  

It was such a fantastic day and a great success all round. The response we had from people afterwards was incredible and it seems as if many people are looking forward to OxJam 2013! I haven't been as involved in organising this years OxJam music festival but my sister has been working her little butt off to pull it all together to make it even bigger and better and I can't wait! Look out for a post about this years OxJam in the near future!   

Have you attended any of your local OxJam events or maybe you are organising your own event? Let me know below! If not I would definitely recommend taking a look at their website http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxjam.