About Us

The Salford Dragon Boat Festival is one of a series of nationwide charity dragon boat festivals designed as a fund raising opportunity for the smaller and medium sized charity. In keeping with our ethos, all our Charity Dragon Boat Festivals are set up as Open Festivals.

In the UK there are two types of charity dragon boat events: Closed Events and Open Festivals.
 
A Closed Event is where a client charity contracts a dragon boat events provider to supply their event as a fund raising event for that charity. Each team entering the event will pay a team entry fee to the charity and each member of those dragon boat teams (usually 16 - 20 people per team) will raise sponsorship for the charity. The upside for successful charities is an event which can raise ten's of thousands (sometimes, hundreds of thousands) of pounds in one day. The down side is the charity organisers must recruit all the teams - and the dragon boat company will still need to be paid should the organisers not be successful in recruiting sufficient teams to make their event viable. It's very much a Catch 22 situation because without knowing you have the teams needed to make the event work, is it worth the risk in trying ot organise your own event?
 
An Open Festival works slightly differently. Unlike a closed event, an Open festival is organised independently and is open to all charities. Charity fund raisers are encouraged to promote the festival to their client database to generate interest and get team entries. The number of teams each charity can entry is limited only by the event’s capacity (36 teams in 2010) so even small charities have everything to play for. Each team enters at a fixed price per team and as the entry fee is paid to the festival organisers directly, the financial risk to the charity for being promoting in the event and getting team entries is ZERO.

Just like a Closed Event, each member of the dragon boat teams will raise sponsorship for their team's nominated charity. An Open Festival is virtually risk free to the charities as it is Event Organiser who contracts the dragon boat events provider to supply their event. This means that smaller charities who lack the resources to make a Closed Event viable can benefit from the awesome fund raising power of a dragon boat event, even if it means they are only able to enter just two or three teams.

The Salford Dragon Boat Festival is organised by Julian Thursfield, who lives just outside Chester and has an extensive background in dragon boating, water sports activities and dragon boat event organisation. Starting as a canoeing and sailing instructor back in the ‘70s, Julian later joined the Royal Air Force and progressed to become the Chief Canoeing Instructor for RAF Sealand. His canoeing career progressed still further when he was offered a position to teach white water canoeing to the Armed Forces at the British Outward Bound Centre in Norway, where he gained extensive experience in high adrenaline adventure based activities as well as expedition and event organisation.

After leaving the RAF in 1989, he became involved in the emerging new sport of dragon boating and was soon offered a position as an instructor for a Cheshire based dragon boat company. As his skills became more in demand, Julian gained valuable experience working as a freelance instructor for all the various UK dragon boat providers and over the years, has competed in events at local, regional, national and even international levels. He first came across Dragon Boat Events Ltd. (the UK’s largest dragon boat events company) in the late 90’s and has since risen to become one of the company’s key instructors. He is now a familiar face at events all over the UK, from events up in Scotland to events as far south as Falmouth, the Channel Islands and even Switzerland.

In 2004 he combined his armed forces event organisation experience with his dragon boat instructor experience and organised the Chester Dragon Boat Festival.  Now an established Open festival held annually, the Chester Dragon Boat Festival has helped raise more than £91,000 for twenty four different charities.

In 2007 he took on his most challenging role to date, that of working as the National Events Manager for Dragon Boat Events Ltd. Through his work, he was able to significantly increase the number of events done by the company as well as making major improvements to company’s operating systems and procedures. He left the company at the end of 2008 and is now working as the organiser in chief for The Salford Charity Dragon Boat Festival.