Dear All

I’m not sure that demanding a fixed percentage of the door is such a good idea. I think what is actually needed is transparency from the organisers about the budget for each gig and for the overall event. On the face of it being offered £150 for making a presentation that you’ve presumably either done before or expect to do again is not a spectacularly poor deal, particularly if you can negotiate expenses on top of this. If actually turning up and doing the gig takes a couple of hours net of travelling then you’ll be getting about £75 an hour which is rather better than 10x the minimum wage, and I’m not sure that complaining about this will (or should) get you much sympathy.

Dom’t forget that science festivals have to cover all their costs to survive: if you are a big enough name to attract an audience of 500-1000 paying a tenner each to hear you, and your gig sells out, then you’re going to bring in £30k to the festival’s coffers. That money has to pay all the costs of your gig, (including your whack) and to contribute to the costs of organising the rest of the festival, too. Part the income that the ‘headline acts’ generate will go to funding the smaller, possibly undersubscribed, events at the festival where less well-known presenters (who probably need the £150 plus expenses rather more than a big name who can fill a 1000 seat auditorium) will have interesting, not to say important, things to say to much smaller audiences.  The income your name generates may also go towards funding schools events and free family events, all of which are surely at least as important as hearing some big name presenter in the effort to communicate science as widely as possible.

Yes, its worth asking (nicely) why you’re only being offered £150 to speak, and with any luck the Festival organisers will have the decency to be open about the finances of the whole event and will be able to demonstrate that they are making you the best offer they reasonably can consistent with the long term financial viability of the festival. One would also hope that the organisers would offer a flat fee for speakers, so that whether you are the Astronomer Royal or a fresh faced, eager post-doc your contributions are all valued equally.


Hope this helps

Richard.

  
Richard Ellam
L M Interactive
Science Shows and Hands-On Stuff
[log in to unmask]
www.lminteractive.co.uk

On 7 Apr 2015, at 10:51, Wiseman, Richard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Good morning
> 
> I have just heard about another big Science Festival offering to pay a speaker £150 whilst expecting to sell 300 tickets at £10 each!  To help stop this kind of profiteering I think it would be great for Festivals to adopt a Charter that guarantees minimal fees for performers. 
> 
> Basically, they would agree to always offer performers a minimum of 25% of the door, plus travel and accommodation. Obviously, some performers may want to negotiate more, and others may wish to decline the fee (if, for example, they thought that speaking at the event was part of their job, or were trying out new material), but this would be the performer's choice.  
> 
> And the code would only apply to solo talks, and not panels, events where people were only doing a few mins, or fund raisers. 
> 
> It would be great if funders and sponsors encouraged this best practice by not supporting festivals that didn't sign up for the Charter.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Best
> 
> Richard
> 
> 
> Prof Richard Wiseman
> Psychology Department
> University of Hertfordshire
> Mob: 077 90905219
> www.richardwiseman.com
> 
> **********************************************************************
> 
> Commands - send an email (any subject) to [log in to unmask] with one of the following messages (ignoring text in brackets)
> 
> • set psci-com nomail (to stop receiving messages while on holiday)
> • set psci-com mail (to resume getting messages)
> • signoff psci-com (to leave the list)
> • Subscribe here https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=psci-com
> 
> Contact list owner at [log in to unmask]
> Small print and JISCMail acceptable use policy https://sites.google.com/site/pscicomjiscmail/the-small-print
> 
> **********************************************************************

**********************************************************************

Commands - send an email (any subject) to [log in to unmask] with one of the following messages (ignoring text in brackets)

• set psci-com nomail (to stop receiving messages while on holiday)
• set psci-com mail (to resume getting messages)
• signoff psci-com (to leave the list)
• Subscribe here https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=psci-com

Contact list owner at [log in to unmask]
Small print and JISCMail acceptable use policy https://sites.google.com/site/pscicomjiscmail/the-small-print

**********************************************************************