Thank You to everybody tha came to Ladyfest!!!

Friday:

Was bonkers a real random mix of bands, Firstly we had Albatross Conspiracy, that was absoloutley amazing, one lady, a laptop and keyboard....All Tomorrow's Parties better watch out as Tanya will be taking over their show one day you mark my words!

We then had Femmepop, who were really great and played an excellent set AND they bought all their own equipment without batting an eyelid. great music lovely people....promoters book this band!

Then we had the mighty STINKMITT play and although the crowd was slightly thin on the ground, they took it all in their stride and played an amazing gig, would have been better if there was no seating in the venue then people would have no option to dance! We hung out with the ladies from Stinkmitt for a few nights and they truely rock!

 

Saturday

Saturday was great, although we ran over schedules by quite a bit. All bands played really really well, its a shame that the smoking ban had such a huge impact on sets.

We would like to thank:

Miss The Occupier - Amazing, so glad i finally got to see them live

The Mothers - Funny as heck, great set and great dancing from the litle man

Violet Beauregarde - Great Great Great! Ladyfest Loves VB

DRAG - Never cease to amaze me, seem to do a better set everytime i see them.

Veil - Really tight new line up, and Amanda played despite a swollen poorly hand! Loads of crowd dancing......always good.

Vile Vile Creatures - Fan-bloody-tastic their set made me very happy!

Valerie - Loads of dancing and a lots of passion. I will be certainly attending the Lola and The Cartwheels show where Valerie and Vile Vile Creatures will play.

Ill Ease - Elizabeth is possibly one of the nicest people i have ever met, and one of the most talented too, all that noise from one woman!

Gertrude - Again the lateness and smoking ban means they didnt have a huge crowd, which sucked cos these were awesome. Can't thank them enough.

 

Saturday workshops

Alexis and Neely Bat held the revisiting the personal as political zine workshop, which i attended breifly, this was really cool and i was gutted that i had to leave early.

Jenny did a Alternative DIY menstrual products workshop after, which taught how to save money and the environment.

The Chart Your Cycle Roadshow was up next and and inhibitions was shed like uterus lining.

 

Sunday

After 4 of the 6 artists that was due to play on sunday cancelled we was left with a crisis, fortunately Rai Studley stepped in and all was well, and the very poorly Chloe Vaughan found her own replacement which was really good of her, and despite Chloe's illness she still managed to sing with Carol Palmer. Sophies Pigeons went on stage first and really blew me away, lots of crowd participation and was funny as well. Really glad they played.

We also had some fantastic literature that was read out by various actors or artists. All material was submitted to the literature team.

A big thanks to Sabrina Smith, Charisse Sayers, Alex Ellis, Alex Walsh, Helena and Jodie for all their work.

Sunday Workshops

A massive thanks to Selina for her Comic Book Production workshop, despite a technical mishap with times and venue opening, it went really well. I really enjoyed this workshop.

Then we had Stitch and Bitch which everybody seemes to enjoy! Thanks Karen and Jen for that.

 

All in all a fab weekend.

Friday 5th October

7.30-11.00pm @ Firebug, 1 millstone road Leicester (upstairs)

£3 on the door or free with weekend pass

STINKMITT

Albatross Conspiracy

Lyra

Femmepop

Saturday 6th October

SUMO 4-11pm, 54 Braunstone Gate

£5 on the door or free with weekend/day pass

GERTRUDE
ILL EASE

Valerie

Vile Vile Creatures

Veil

DRAG

Violet Beauregarde

The Mothers

Miss The Occupier

 

Sunday 7th October

SUMO 4.00-10.30pm (54 Braunstone Gate)

£5 on the door or free with a weekend/day pass

CHLOE VAUGHAN

Hannah Brackenbury

Sophie's Pigeon

Rai Studley

Plus Lierature...

 

 

We are very poor due to lack of funding at present, please feel free to donate any cash via paypal www.paypal.com

and send to one of our organisers at stacey.adams2@btinternet.com

All donations will go to funding our main event next week. Eeeek

Also Badges can now be purchased via our website www.ladyfest-leicester.moonfruit.com

75p each (2 designs)

 

What a day, bloody awesome.

Everything went smoothly and all in all a huge success.

First of all i wanna thank Sabrina and her crew for doing such an amazing job with the literature/theatre. It was really great and seemed to fit in perfectly with everything. All the Actresses and Actors deserve a massive pat on the back. Splendid stuff.

I also wanna thank all the bands

Cooties Attack (Lovely People, my personal highlight of the show..Their Amazing, youre just boring.....*boogies*)

Idle Silver (Rocking Ladies, Impressive stuff will catch em again soon)

In Bed with Beth (Great As Always, Always a pleasure)

Little Whores on The Prairie (So much energy, Lovely to have them play)

The Broken (Fantastic! Wish more people stuck around, they missed a great set)

 

I would also like to thank all the committee for helping out, marvellous!

Unfortunately my camera was rubbish and all the pics came out too dark, if you happen to have any photo's we would love to see em!

Now..
We all know there's 100's of perfectly good t-shirts out there that are homeless.
They didn't stand much of chance with all of these brand new shirts jumping off the rails to new families.
Well not anymore!!

Ladyfest Leicester have started an adopt a tshirt scheme, all you have to do is spend £7 and you will receive your very own Ladyfest Shirt!

All shirts are printed by hand, and have been either donated to us, or are from charity shops, we like to recycle and customise!
Many styles, colours and sizes available.
Pics coming very soon on our myspace!

All money to Ladyfest Leicester

Ladyfest Love xx

Thats right, get your tickets by visiting www.ladyfest-leicester.moonfruit.com via paypal!

Details of bands/acts playing are on their too (more tbc)

Weekend Tickets (access to all events) = £14

Saturday Tickets (access to all events on Saturday) = £8

Sunday Tickets (access to all events on Sunday) = £8

 

Door prices available but limited (@ Sumo)

Its not just music kids........we have Literature, workshops and Art too :)

We had a fab afternoon making our banner, which is work in progress :)

Sarah our hostess with the mostess did a great job with the veggie BBQ.

Here's some pics, will post more of the end result when we are finished. Glitter at the ready! :)

Hey
We will start taking submissions from bands on Monday, please either ask for a postal address to send CDs or send a myspace link to your band/music.
Theres only a limited amount of slots (10 eek) but we also plan to have music fundraisers so there should be room on those. We are also having an all-dayer in september as a warm up, which should be rather special.
We are also working to a strict budget so info on what expenses you need covering is a must. Bands will not be paid (other than headlining bands)
If we wanna book you for either a fundraiser or the actual event we will be in touch.
We look forward to hearing ya.
Lots of Ladyfest Love
xxx

Just thought we would comment on how Ladyfest Leeds, Cambridge & ourselves have been compared to pornfests!

As far as we are concerned this comment has been based on false information and opinion.

It was reported on the Object website that Ladyfest Leicester are having a Poledancing fundraisers to help boost our finances to organise this festival...We are NOT and NEVER have planned to.

Saying that, I will not deny that when we had our first brainstorming meeting six months ago a sex workers and feminist oppinion discussion was one of our hundred workshop idea's. We also thought it was a positive thing to have a practical pole dancing session at the end of it(or beginning) so everybody can get involved whether they are anti pole dancing or not, it was aimed to be fun and educational while providing a balanced discussion and not intending to promote our own personal views, which can be implied if it gets to a heated debate.

This and many other workshops that we had as a part of brainstorming were discussed with our committe and we decided we didn't wish to take the idea further, so consequently this plan was scrapped before it even existed. We have had a rough idea of what workshops we are having for several months now. Making these claims total misinformation, totally FALSE!

We at Ladyfest Leicester (and quite possibly every other ladyfest to date) do not impose our personal views, morals and beliefs on to others. We just aim to provide a safe environment for these issues to be aired where everybody can express themselves without fear of being persecuted.

Ladyfest Leeds and Cambridge should be proud for all that they have done and i support them 100%

 

Ladyfesters struggle with so much when organising an event like this, it truely is disapointing when things like this happen. We get hassle from men saying its sexist-fest......get hundreds of emails thinking Ladyfest is some kind of orgy because they do not take the time to educate themselves....all along with the general organisation which can be hard work...this is the last thing we need, when all we are trying to do is do something positive for the city.

Thankfully it is all worth it!

Thanks to everybody that brought this subject to my attention. These are my own feelings and do not represent the whole of our team.

S x

What a year 2007 has been for Ladyfest's......and its only april! Both Cambridge and Leeds ruled! Mighty inspiring and they made me proud to be apart of it, even just as a crowd member.

I got the chance to meet great new people (big up to the Ladyfest Newcastle team, nice to meet ya at last!)

I also got to hear some great new music.......Vile Vile Creatures are awesome! As are Royal Treatment Plant!

Above all i got to be educated throughout both events, and gain a sense of a community despite living miles away from both festival locations.

So i guess the biggest thing i hoped to achieve from writing this blog is to let all that was involved in both Ladyfest Leeds and Cambridge that they did a splendid splendid job!

Stace