User:Sideards/Sandbox

The Cosmic Puffin Music Festival is held at Easter each year on Mersea Island at Mersea Youth Camp, near Colchester in Essex.

The aim of the event is to raise money and awareness for charities. Musicians perform entirely for free, with no fee, rider or fuel costs showing their support for the charities aswell as the live music scene. The event is staffed with volunteers.

Dates
The first Cosmic Puffin festival was held from the 21 to the 23 of March 2008.

Charities
The Cosmic Puffin founded by Yammezz (Jamie Anderson) to help raise funds for (C.O.S.M.I.C.) in London, UK and the childrens ward called the PUFFIN ward at the  Basildon and Thurrock Hospital. Despite adverse weather conditions the Cosmic Puffin managed to raise in excess of £1000 to share between the charities.

Ticket Price
Entry price was ten pounds.

Weather
Although there were extremely adverse weather conditions including high winds across the island and heavy snow the event still went on. Many of the bands had to improvise their lineup as various band members were unable to reach the island due to the weather conditions.

Bands
The bands that played at the first Cosmic Puffin festival included Death By Desire, The Fancy Dress Party, Picturehouse Big Band, The Rhizomes, Saltdog, Dylan James, Darkfire, Hotwired, The Optic Nerves, The AC’s, The Hokie Joint , Purple Melon, Weird Gear, CODA, Skandal, Defferred Sucess (not a spelling error!), Laura Younger and The New Town Kings.

Other attractions
Due to the weather there was very little in the form of other attractions for the first Cosmic Puffin festival, however there were circus workshops and fire eating/fire breathing displays

Promotion
Most of the bands were filmed for free by a video crew from the music promotion company MyChoonz. The event was primarily promoted via MySpace and by word of mouth. On the 27th of March 2008 a website was created to help promote the event more effectivley, to archive various media from the event and to sell tickets for future Cosmic Puffin Festivals. The website includes links to many Photographs and contains many videos from the event. Many of the bands donated tracks to a compilation CD dedicated to the Cosmic Puffin and the above mentioned charities.

Cosmic Puffin 2
This time the Cosmic Puffin had 2 music stages (one called COSMIC stage, the other called MYCHOONZ stage) with around twice as many bands than the first year. Jamie Anderson (Yammezz) managed the Cosmic stage and Simon Deards (Sideards) from MyChoonz managed the MyChoonz stage.

Dates
The Cosmic Puffin 2 took place from the 10th to the 12th April 2009.

Charities
The charities chosen this time round were BLISS (for babies born too soon) and NAS (National Autistic Society). This time round each charity received around £1400.

Ticket Price
Entry price was twenty five pounds and included camping for the whole weekend.

Weather
The weather was vastly better than the previous year with sunshine for the most part of the weekend.

Bands
The bands that played the Cosmic Puffin II included: The Fancy Dress Party, Ady Johnson, The Picturehouse Big Band, The Rhizomes, Lizzie B, Sista Suzi, Liz Williams, Kundalini Drive, Wobbly Squadron, Pro-rata (formerly CODA), Defferred Sucess, Automatic Slim, Hokie Joint, Skandal, The Iceni, Alunah, Weird Gear, Surfquake, Zubzub, The Optic Nerves, Cling, The Nanobots, The Starfighters Bob Calvert's band, House Of Thandoy featuring  Mike Howlett from  Gong and Basil Brooks from Zorch Zorch, DJ Weirditude, Peyote Guru, Spirits Of The Earth, Trev and Kev  Trev Thoms, Peyote Mothership, Bruise, Nukli, Shom, Bubbledubble,  Dream Machine, G-Delic, DJ Kozmik Ken, Electric Dub Guru, Xenon Codex, Assassins Of Silence ( Hawkwind tribute band), Xoo, Dyframix, Wind Of Change and  Litmus.

Other attractions
Aswell as circus workshops and fire eating/fire breathing displays the second Cosmic Puffin festival had John Row storyteller and poet entertaining both children and adults alike. Also there was a hand made willow labyrinth and a solar stage which invited people to perform improvised music sets.

Promotion
After the second Cosmic Puffin festival, on the 14th of April 2009, an internet forum was set up for people to discuss their experiences and opinions of the event aswell as making suggestions for future events. Once again many photographs and videos were added to the website

Dates
The 3rd Cosmic Puffin festival is due to take place from the 2nd to the 4th of April 2010

Charities
The charities will once again be BLISS (for babies born too soon) and NAS (National Autistic Society).

Ticket Price
Tickets have gone on sale for £35 including camping for the weekend but are due to increase to £45 including camping for the weekend once the bands have been announced

Bands
Bands for the 3rd Cosmic Puffin have not been announced yet.

Promotion
A Facebook group has been established to compliment the MySpace page, the internet forum and the website.