European Fan Grant

The European Fan Grant was a form of fan fund proposed by Ken Slater of the UK in 1959. It came to nothing.

Slater first proposed the idea of a TAFF-style fund at Cytricon II, the 1956 Eastercon, when TAFF itself was in its infancy. The convention had been notably international and Slater's proposal was to bring over fans from mainland Europe to future events, presumably to maintain the momentum. There doesn't seem to have been any suggestion of sending UK fans back the other way. (After all, the Continent at that time was hardly comparable to America: there were still few cons, and even fewer that would be accessible for Britons; European fans, especially internationally-minded, naturally gravitated to UK as to Mecca.) However,

It was pointed out at the time that this fund might tend to rival TAFF and that it wasn’t really necessary as expenses were relatively small.

(It is worth remembering that in the 1950s the cost of Transatlantic travel, often still by ship, was exorbitant compared to today, while the Western European countries had good connection to the UK by comparatively affordable train and ferry.)

In 1959 Slater resurrected the idea as 'a set grant of say £5 or £10', to subsidise rather than fully fund continental fans to attend UK conventions. He issued a circular inviting responses under the heading 'Eurofangrant' and the report in Skyrack #2 (dated 'May 1st 1959'), the source of all this information, said that topics covered included:

Amount of grant, number of persons to benefit, qualifications for nominators, a sliding scale of representatives per country according to fan strength, contributions to the fund, currency payments, qualifications for voters, administration and language difficulties.

Presumably it wasn't well received as there is no evidence grants were ever given.

SEFF, the Scandinavian-European Fan Fund, was launched in 1983 but was short-lived. The European Fan Fund was proposed in 2019 and finally launched in 2023.

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Fanfund

1959

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