The forecast on the Tuesday said forty percent. On the Thursday it said eighty. On the Saturday morning it rained without a break from eight until we packed up at half past three.
We had planned for four hundred people. Six hundred and forty came.
Why the venue saved us
Camp North End has covered yards and hard standing, which is the only reason this went ahead at all. We had chosen it in June for exactly this reason and had a wet-weather plan that moved all three stages under cover with a total loss of about a third of the capacity.
The lesson we took is not complicated. If you programme an outdoor event in November, book a site that does not need the weather to cooperate, and write the wet plan the same week you sign the contract rather than the week of the event.
Two hundred and fourteen people signed in at the welcome desk having never been to anything we have run before.
The welcome desk did the heavy lifting
Two hundred and fourteen people signed in at the welcome desk having never been to anything we have run before. That is a third of the entire attendance, at a first-year festival, in the rain.
Amara Nwosu built that desk and staffed it with eleven volunteers on rotation. Every first-timer was walked to their first session by a person rather than pointed at a map. Nine months on, ninety-one of those two hundred and fourteen are still attending something in Charlotte every month.
It is the single highest-return thing we do and it costs eleven volunteers and a folding table.
What we would change
The family area ran for five hours straight without a break for the two people staffing it, which was unfair and will not happen again. It runs in shifts from now on.
We also badly underestimated the food. Twelve kitchens sold out by half past one, an hour before close, and several hundred people spent the last stretch of a cold wet day with nothing hot to hold. In 2026 the kitchens are being asked to plan for double.