FOTOFREO DOES AN ISAF
What is it about the people who are in charge of events in Fremantle that makes them claim inflated figures? Is it to impress major sponsors like Eventscorp, or is there a general blindness towards reality? First ISAF claimed half a million visitors would come to Freo for the event, now FotoFreo also exaggerates the figures.
In today’s Fremantle Gazette FotoFreo director Bob Hewitt claims the 2010 international photography festival attracted more than 90.000 visitors. That is bollocks with a big B in my opinion! I doubt even if the word visitors was changed to visitations they would get anywhere near the numbers Hewitt claims. I have spoken to volunteers who man the venues and they talked about a trickle of people a day, not hundreds, let alone thousands of them. I visited most shows and the number of people was insignificant, while mainly the same people came to the opening evenings, so how FotoFreo comes up with 90,000 plus visitors is anyone’s guess.
I am a big fan of FotoFreo and believe it is fantastic that Fremantle has such a good international art festival every two years. I have participated with exhibitions in the last three FotoFreo, so my support for it is unquestionable, as is my desire to see it continue and grow. But don’t give us inflated figures please!
Roel Loopers
The Ballarat Photo Festival had its visitor numbers professionally audited. As I remember the official audit of visitor numbers was about 60,000. Neither FotoFreo nor ISAF, as far as I know, have been asked for professional audits. It appears they gain the figures from simple figures worked out on the back of an envelope or two. If they did have official audits please forgive me but I’d like to know who the auditors were and by what research methodology they arrived at their figures. Without professional audits by qualified people the figures they give have to be considered as rubbery to say the least.