Introduction

Let's make festival organization more accessible — welcome to the Ouishare Fest Toolkit.

Despite the common belief that physical meetings are outdated in the digital age, festivals, summits, conferences and retreats remain key moments of convergence for many organizations, communities and movements. Large-scale events can be critical for making transformative change happen, because they can touch people in more profound ways than online communication.

Organizing festivals is complex and often expensive. To do it well, a lot of resources or volunteers are needed. Could event organization be made more accessible and easy? What would it look like if one were to open source how to organize a festival, from A to Z?

This toolkit was started in 2016 by the Ouishare Fest Paris team, led by Francesca Pick, to open source the organization of their event. It gathers and documents everything you need to know on how each area of Ouishare Fest is organized — from finances, program, event production and communications — and includes templates, case studies and checklists.

It is a living document that will be updated and grow over time as Ouishare Fest evolves. It is meant to be used as a guide for organizing events of all sorts.