Chartsandgraphs: The Richmond Folk Festival
Here we are, on the eve of Richmond’s Greatest Festival, and I thought I would throw a handful of interesting/quai-interesting charts your way. You know, to get your folk pumped and primed. If, after looking over these graphs, you have requests for more (keeping in mind that my access to data is limited) leave them below in the comments, and I’ll see what I can do. Chartsandgraphs!
Folk Festival attendance, in thousands, 2005–2011
The Folk Festival, which started as the National Folk Festival in 2005 and then switched to the Richmond Folk Festival in 2008, is Richmond’s largest festival. Last year it brought in 190,000 people over the weekend. That is many people.
Also of note: check out the dip in attendance 2009 due to a rainy Saturday.
Equivalent percentage of Richmond’s population in attendance, 2006-2011
You know what else is many people? The population of Richmond proper. 204,214 souls according to Wikipedia. So what percentage of Richmond’s population is represented by Folk Festival attendance? Now, careful, don’t misinterpret this graph. It’s not the actual percentage of Richmonders that attend the Festival, it’s just a handy way to put the amount of people in context.
Number of volunteers, 2006–2011
Every year hundreds (even thousand(s)!) of volunteers sign up to lend a helping hand in a bunch of different ways. The Festival is, as we’ve already covered, massive and expensive so volunteers are very valuable, in fact you should sign up to volunteer today.
Donations collected by the Bucket Brigade, in thousands, 2006–2011
One of the most visible ways you can volunteer is by joining the Bucket Brigade. If you’ve been to the Festival before you’ve seen these cheery folks asking for donations, a “drop in the bucket” if you will. But, guys, it is a literal, orange bucket.
Anyway, these fine folk have raised a big chunk of change over the years.
Average cost of the Folk Festival each year$1.3M This is a lot of money. |
Total donated over six years$347,800 This number is big too, but still way smaller than that other number. |
Three lines!, 2006–2011
This graph. I’m not even sure what is going on here, other than we’ve got three lines that cross each other at various points. Oh, watch out, they all have different scales too. Buyer beware!
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Ross Catrow
Ross loves his family, Richmond, and beer (in that order). He is the master and commander of the good ship RVANews. Occasionally he takes a picture or two.
5 comments on Chartsandgraphs: The Richmond Folk Festival
Why didn’t you project 2011 data so I can use the graphs to decide if I want to attend this year!?
neat graphs! from my rough math, it looks like the average donation per attendee is $0.30.
p.s. We actually now have 1,403 volunteers for this year! :)
Nice work, very entertaining!
As attendance is just a guess, quite honestly, one of the better predictors in seeing how the fest has grown is beer sales (by kegs kicked). That would be neet graph over the years too as I know they had huge sales this year (365 +).