Having seen the tremendous reception offshore barerbshop choruses receive in North America, perhaps you shold consdier a trip abroad yourself. Gail Grainger, president of the Spanish Association of Barbershop Singers writes:
Dear barbershop leaders, I'm writing to ask for your help. You will know that SABS is a relatively new barbershop organisation formed 6 years ago and for the last 5 years we have tried to run an annual convention. We only have 150 members at present, made up of 75% ex-pats and 25% Spanish nationals, but we have been able to have a small convention of up to 600 registrations in recent years because International choruses have attended to compete in our 'International' competition which is run separately to our National contest. This year we had only 2 Spanish choruses in our National competition and then a further 7 from England, Ireland, Sweden and Holland in our International section. It was not only a boost for our memberships but also started to support our goals to grow by bringing barbershop to more people as we ran extra shows in the area (Calpe) in the run up to convention. For 2015 we have chosen to hold our convention in Barcelona, not only because we felt it would be appealing to our International guests but also because there is no barbershop chorus in that area and we see it as a chance to bring barbershop to a new region. However, as at today, we have only one International chorus registered and so are faced with a decision about whether we can proceed as planned. I would be incredibly grateful if you would forward the attached information about 'En Armonia 2015' in Barcelona to your members. If any choruses are interested in attending we will be happy to discuss holding the early bird registration rate open to them for longer. It would be an incredible shame for us to not be able to proceed as planned, as a SABS only convention does not offer the same learning and development opportunities for our members, most of whom are new to our wonderful hobby. We need to make a decision about our 2015 convention fairly soon so would very much appreciate a response by the end of June. As a separate request, if any of your choruses (whether they have attended a SABS convention or not) have feedback about what may or may not make our convention appealing we would love to hear it - is it location, timing, cost or other factors that helps a chorus decide to come or not. We are still learning in Spain and we are desperately trying to grow a strong stable organisation here so any help or feedback you can offer from your own experiences would be gratefully received.