Become a host venue
How the Longest Yarn Can Boost Your Local Economy
Hosting The Longest Yarn can greatly benefit your local economy. This unique exhibition attracts a lot of media attention, shining a spotlight on your town or region. The publicity draws visitors and the increased foot traffic boosts local businesses, supporting shops, restaurants, and accommodations.
Many local businesses around venues hosting the Longest Yarn have reported positive impact.
Discover more in this article by Matt Leslie, published in February 2025 in the *Impartial Reporter*, with insights directly from Enniskillen. Click the link below.
Get Ready to Host with Confidence
If you are considering hosting The Longest Yarn in the future, here are a few tips to guide you:
- The display is 80 metres long and is best presented in a U-Shape, so your space needs to be at least 40 metres.
- Panel cases can go back-to-back but must have a solid divider because otherwise, you can see through the two Perspex cases and the meaning is lost.
- From experience over the past year, our expectations of visitors is around 25,000 per month. However, we cannot say that this is definite. The largest numbers we have had are 1,400 in one day. If you have space, you may want to offer a seated queueing system which has proved useful in past large venues such as cathedrals. Crowd capacity control may be required at peak times. Queues to seated areas are a big asset. Again we cannot guarantee the large crowds.
- You must be able to provide restrooms, car parking, wheelchair access, and space for pushchairs. Refreshments on offer are rather desirable and popular.
- Our main revenue stream is our guidebook along with other merchandise, we do ask that you sell our merchandise on sale return basis. We will negotiate a commission.
- We do not charge rental for the use of The Longest Yarn; however, we do ask you to assist with the transportation between the venues. The logistics company that we use is part of the charity and does not charge any profits. It is all at cost
- We do not mind if you charge an entrance fee. For example, cathedrals have applied suggested donations, and we would appreciate if there are facilities for donations to us as well.
- You must have Public Liability in place, and The Longest Yarn must be insured as well.
- We do need assistance with the loading and unloading of the exhibition. Everything is already in boxes, and the boxes are used as stands for the panels. Installation is very straightforward, but we do need between eight and ten people to help with the lifting.
- Volunteers are not necessarily needed, but it is good to have help with crowd control if required, to answer questions and to direct people towards the merchandise.
For further questions, please contact Tansy Forster by Email, Phone or WhatsApp to arrange a meeting.