Kia ora friends,
It was a sad day when we decided to cancel this years Living Wood Fair. It took a great deal of soul searching and looking around at who was at the table to make this year happen. What we saw was that our team were tired and facing challenge in their lives – many in big transitions – a few of the key people had to step down to care for theirs and their families needs and as we did not even have close to enough funding to put on a much smaller event we could not guarantee any money in exchange for the massive amounts of energy that people would put in. I personally realised that I was also run down and burnt out, and would not be able to give the event the energy it needed to be the wonderful educational community gathering we all know and love, especially limping along with a much smaller crew. So we made the call.
The vision for this event has always been to bring community together, to skill share, to offer an opportunity to be creative and connect, whilst sharing knowledge on how to tread more lightly on this beautiful Earth. This event is not a business, the organisation is a non profit incorporated society. We apply for funding to cover some of our costs and charge a small ticket price at the gate to keep it as affordable as possible for our local community because without them we are nothing. How can we make real change in the world if some people are excluded?
As usual this year we applied for funding, offered sponsorship packages and even ran a crowdfunding campaign to pre sell tickets but only secured $2500 in funding and $2000 in sponsorship. This is a tiny fraction of what we would need. That challenge, coupled with our team’s health and wellbeing needs meant that it was just too much of a stretch to make happen.
As we are not putting on the event in 2025 we are giving back all the funding and sponsorship that we received. In the past, any profit that was made from an event around 50% went to seed funding the next event and the other 50% was given as donation to the team that put hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in to make that event happen. If you are interested, all our financials are public record because we are an incorporated society.
If you want to support the Living Wood Fair to happen again please get in touch – we welcome your donations, funding and team support – kiaora@livingwoodfair.co.nz
May the forest be with you!
Liv and the Living Wood Fair team.
Living Wood Fair 