Fall Down the Rabbit Hole & Explore The Fairy Tale Fair

Where Our Journey Began

The Fairy Tale Fair was launched in the summer of 2012 and is the creation of Claire Montgomery. As a designer and regular on the craft scene herself she decided to set up her own craft fair. She loves taking part in craft fairs but felt there was a lack of community based fairs for all the family to enjoy. After a few months planning and hounding craft-y contacts The Fairy Tale Fair was finally born! The first fair was in August and was in fact the hottest day of the year! It was held in a little hall in Patcham, Brighton and despite the blazing sun saw a huge turn out! It was quite stressful in the lead up to the first event, not knowing what the response or turn out would be but luckily it all went well. Stall holders and visitors very much enjoyed their day- eating alice in wonderland themed cakes, drinking gallons of tea and selling or buying wonderful handmade creations.  One thing was for certain though- we needed a bigger venue!…

How We Became Established

2013 was a busy year for The Fairy Tale Fair! We moved into our new venue of Patcham Methodist Church, which provides a much bigger hall, cafe area as well as a craft workshop room and entrance hall. This venue works really well for us, and often means families stay for hours exploring all the rooms have to offer and of course stopping for tea and cake in our yummy vintage tearoom! In 2013 we held a Easter Spring fair, Summer fair and Christmas fair too. The Fairy Tale Fair brand continued to grow, building up a strong online following. This following, as well as the thousands of flyers have lead to each event so far being well attended and successful. We’ve had great feedback about each of the fairs, and have attracted lots of press attention too, including The Argus and The Crafts Institute.

The Year of Expansion!

2014 continued to see our fair grow more than ever before! In April we held our Spring fair in Patcham, which as with each fair before had great feedback. Visitors enjoyed making easter craft creations in our workshops, eating Spring time treats in the vintage tearoom and bringing the fairy tales to life on the little ones faces. We also held a charity raffle for The Martlets.

The winter saw an exciting expansion for the fair. As well as our Christmas fair at Patcham Methodist on November 15th, and a move into central Brighton with our fair at Brighton Open Market, we also held a big festive special at Brighton Racecourse on Saturday 6th December, with over 100 stalls of high quality local designers and makers! It was very exciting expanding into a much bigger more central venue, if a little scary!  We felt it was also important to still have our fair in Patcham, as we think the local community feel works so well, and it has become our well loved home. Last Christmas and Spring we had so many wonderful applicants that we had to turn down as we simply didn’t have the space, so by holding the local and central fairs we felt this was the best of both worlds and allowed more opportunities for stall holders too.

We now have a large social following-  5,000 of you on facebook, and Twitter isn’t fair behind. We also launched on Instagram recently. Thank you to everyone who has visited, taken part, supported and featured us over the past two and a half years. It has helped us expand to where we are today, and we could not have done it without you!

For 2014 we were also selected by American Express as one of the top 100 small businesses in the UK, for Small Business Saturday UK on 6th December. How exciting! We were also featured in The Guardian, The Argus, Mollie Makes, Vintage Brighton, and had a visit from Caroline Lucas MP!

2015 – More fairs then ever before!

2015 was our busiest year for fairs yet. As well as our Spring and Christmas specials at Patcham we also held 5 fairs at Brighton Open Market in central Brighton throughout 2015 and our biggest fair of the year in Worthing in aid of St Barnabas House which raised over £3,000.

In January 2015 we were highly commended in the Loved and Local Awards. We came 2nd in the UK for Markets & Community Events, and 2nd in Brighton & Hove out of all businesses! Votes were cast by visitors and stall holders via The Best of Brighton and Hove, and we had some wonderful feedback from everyone.

Our Spring 2015 fair was featured in The Times national newspaper as well as many local blogs, magazines and press.

In summer 2015 we gained Kallikids ‘Accredited by Parents’ status. We also held a free Children’s Day in conjunction with Brighton Open Market which saw one of their busiest ever days to date!

Winter 2015 saw our busiest Christmas period ever with 5 fairs including Halloween and two Christmas fairs at Brighton Open Market, Christmas at Patcham and our biggest fair of the year at Worthing Charmandean with over 70 stalls. This was in aid of St Barnabas House and raised over £3,000 for them!

During 2016 we hope to continue to expand the fair, enter more awards and grow to be a well established craft fair across the south.

2016 – An Award Winning Year!

In January 2016 we were voted Best Market & Community Event in the UK in the Best Of Business Awards 2016!
We also came 2nd in the Business Awards out of all businesses in Brighton and Hove.

We held an Easter fair at Patcham in March 2016 which was once again well attended and received great comments from visitors and customers alike. Much fun was had in the Easter themed Workshop room!

We held 4 Christmas fairs – returning to Brighton Open Market twice, Patcham and Worthing in aid of St Barnabas. We proud to say we raised over £3,000 for St Barnabas through the Christmas fair!

We also started plans for our first ever wedding fair in the summer and that is to be held in Spring 2017!

2017 – Our Busiest Year Yet!

In January 2017 we were once again voted Best Market & Community Event in the UK in the Best Of Business Awards 2017, which we are incredibly proud of!

We held our first ever wedding fair in March 2017, held at the prestigious Brighton Racecourse and 100 independent wedding sellers joined us! The fair also featured live singers, wedding craft workshops, photo booth and more.

We returned with two Easter fairs in the Spring – at Patcham and our first Easter fair in Worthing in aid of St Barnabas which raised over £2,500 for them!

In May we were very excited to debut at Brighton Fringe!! We held our Fringe fair in central Brighton at Brighton Open Market and it featured over 50 makers, live performances, face painting and a princess or two!

In October we returned with a 2nd wedding fair, this time in West Sussex at The Shoreham Centre. Over 40 talented wedding suppliers joined us plus live singers, craft workshops and beautiful transport options too.

November and December saw the return of a busy festive season! We held 4 Christmas fairs which were all filled with talented makers and magical extras. We returned to Patcham, Brighton Open Market, Worthing Charmandean and then ended the year back at Brighton Open Market. Visitors came and shopped independent with our makers, danced with princesses or Olaf, brought the fairy tales to life with painted faces, stopped in our yummy tearoom, took part in craft workshops and left with a smile on their faces.

We’re pleased to say we raised £3,027.50 for St Barnabas at our Worthing fair. This takes our total raised for St Barnabas, in conjunction with the Northbrook Friends Fundraising Group, to well over £10,000 since December 2015! We are hugely proud of this and the great difference this amount will have on the hospice!

2018 – We’ve come so far!

Firstly THANK YOU to each and everyone of you who visited or took part in any of our fairs or events over the years. Without lovely customers and talented stall holders our fairs wouldn’t exist, so it really means the world.

Our 2018 year started back in the Spring with two Easter fairs at Patcham and Worthing Charmandean. As previous years these fairs were well attended and full of lovely Spring time creations and treats. Although you may remember it snowed in March this year and it was actually snowing and -2 on the day of our Worthing fair (our fault for booking Elsa the snow queen!). Luckily people still ventured out and we raised over £2,000 for St Barnabas Hospice!

Just a couple of days later we held our first ever pop up shop which was very exciting! It was a week long and at Colonnade House, Worthing town centre. We were blown away but the response from the lovely people of Worthing and how many people travelled to visit our shop. The shop featured almost 20 of our regular makers and exhibited everything from prints, to lampshades, to jewellery and pocket money gifts and buys. We really enjoyed playing shop for a week!

In May we headed back to Brighton Open Market for our 2nd Brighton Fringe Festival special fair. The fair featured almost 50 talented makers and creatives as well as live entertainment on the day and special guests including a princess or two of course. It was very exciting to be part of the prestigious Brighton Fringe festival once again and be featured in their brochure which has a print run of 100,000!

At the end of May we were lucky enough to be invited back to Colonnade House to hold a Spring half term pop up shop.

In September we held our only wedding fair of 2018, returning to Brighton Racecourse for our Happily Ever After Creative Wedding Fair. The venue was filled with talented wedding creatives – everything from dresses, to stationery, to flowers, cake, hen do ideas and lots more. All our sellers are independent and local, we don’t believe in sales people, just real people behind the brands we accept. There were also free craft workshops throughout the day and some wonderful live singers.

Then all of a sudden Christmas season was here again! We started our festive fairs with a big full weekend special at Brighton Open Market in central Brighton. This was our first two day event and it was very exciting to take over the market plaza for a full weekend. A week later we headed back to Patcham for our festive fair there, and then on 2nd December we finished our season at Worthing Charmandean in aid of St Barnabas. We’re very proud that this fair was our highest total raised for St Barnabas to date – £3,392.68!! This takes our total raised for St Barnabas since Dec 2015 to £17,141.26 which we are incredibly proud of – it is already helping make a difference in the hospice.

In 2019 we hope to top £20,000 raised for St Barnabas and have a fab festive season once again!

2019 – A Magical Year!

A big thank you to the thousands of you who visited our fairs this year, and hundreds of you who continue to take part every year. Without lovely customers and talented stall holders our fairs wouldn’t exist, so it really means the world.

Our year started back in the Spring with our Easter fair Worthing Charmandean. As previous years this fair was well attended and full of lovely Spring time creations and treats.We’re very pleased to announce this fair in conjunction with Northbrook Friends of St Barnabas raised £2088.50 for the hospice, which goes to a wonderful cause. 70+ talented stall holders joined us plus live entertainment including a mad hatter on stilts (Nick Cook Circus), The Sussex Ghostbusters, Magic Martin, St Barnabas Bee and face painting too.

After a bit of a break over the summer we returned this Christmas with 3 craft fairs AND a week long pop up shop!

First stop was Patcham on Saturday 16th November. The venue was filled with talented makers, craft workshops, face painting and the yummiest festive tearoom run by Bunston Bakes. We also had performances from Patcham Silver Band Youth and visits from the fairy unicorn and Piano Princess.

Just a couple of days later we headed to Worthing for our Christmas pop up shop from 19th – 24th November. The shop was filled with everything from original art to pocket money buys from almost 20 of our regular local makers. We had a busy week and the people of Worthing were so lovely, thanks to Colonnade House for having us!

Our biggest fair of the year was held on Sunday 1st December at Worthing Charmandean. Our ‘So This is Christmas’ fair is held in aid of St Barnabas and we’re very proud that this fair raised – £3,205.50 for St Barnabas!! This takes our total raised for St Barnabas since Dec 2015 to £22,425.50 which we are incredibly proud of – it is already helping make a difference in the hospice.

We ended 2019 with in central Brighton at Brighton Open Market. Almost 60 of our talented makers filled the market on Sunday 8th December selling their festive creations and gifts. We also welcomed a host of live entertainment and special guests including Elsa, Anna, Belle, Olaf the Snowman, The Theatre Workshop Children’s Choir, India Blue Fairy and many more.

We hope you enjoyed our fairs through 2019. Did you have a favourite venue, stall holder or performance? Let us know!

In 2020 we hope to top £25,000 raised for St Barnabas and have a fab festive season once again!

2020 – A New Chapter of our Fairy Tale…

Everything we had planned for 2020 didn’t happen but what did happen was still magical. Back at the end of March when our Easter fair in aid of @stbarnabashouse was sadly cancelled with less than two weeks to go we had a little idea that we could still try and bring you as many of the elements as possible online via social media.

We hadn’t seen anyone else doing this then but we thought we’d give it a go! Since then we have held 8 online fairs including Easter, our Summer 8th birthday fair, Halloween and Christmas. We’ve welcomed such a talented selection of makers at each of these – including many of our regulars and some new who couldn’t usually make our in person fairs. Thousands of viewers have joined in fair and we’ve even had messages from customers in the US and Australia watching too!

We hope you enjoyed them and our entertainment. Although this has been a hugely challenging year we have enjoyed connecting with more of you than ever before and we have plans to make this connection continue in 2021.

We also are proud to have had 10,000 Christmas gift guide brochures printed and delivered with the support of @aceagrams. And we’ve expanded our online creatives directory to bigger than ever before.

So although 2020 was our first year since 2011 with no in person events it’s still been a busy one full of love for handmade and small businesses – and that is certainly one positive we can take away from the year that has been like no other.

2021 – The Year of adaption and return to in Person events…

In these continued uncertain times we find ourselves in once again almost everything we had planned for 2021 didn’t happen but what did happen was still magical. .

We returned with our popular online fairs for Easter, Summer – a special held on the new Tresstle online platform, Halloween and Christmas. We’ve welcomed such a talented selection of makers at each of these – including many of our regulars and some new who couldn’t usually make our in person fairs. Thousands of viewers have joined in fair and we’ve even had messages from customers across the world.

Then on 5th December we returned in person for our first event in 2 years. The Christmas craft fair was held in aid of St Barnabas House at Worthing Charmandean. Although we had to adapt the fair with less stalls and not our usual full range of entertainment and guests it was still a wonderful day and great to see so many of your faces again. Worthing Mayor and town crier opened the fair and visitors braved the cold to queue and get inside. 52 amazing stall holders joined us plus The Sussex Ghostbusters, Face Painting, home baked treats and St Barnabas stalls and raffle. The total raised for St Barnabas is in for our ‘So This is Christmas’ fair Worthing.

We hope you enjoyed the day and we are very pleased to say the fair raised £3,517.67 for St Barnabas! This is our best ever total and they are extremely pleased with the amount raised and would like to pass on their thanks to you. This takes our total raised for St Barnabas through these fairs since Dec 2015 to £25,943.17 which we are incredibly proud of – it is already helping make a difference in the hospice. Thank you to our fab sponsors – Aspire Residential, Alexander Jewellers and Marshalls Carpets for helping make the event possible.

Although this once again has been a hugely challenging year we have enjoyed connecting with more of you than ever before and we have plans to make this connection continue in 2022.

2021 may not have been a good year but we have filled it with love for handmade and small businesses – and that is certainly one positive we can take away from these times.