When I asked if I was missing anything I was referring to evidence and information.

Seems like you're very angry over very little happening, or I'm missing something important?

Fine, the guy hasn't done an event before and you don't like the location - don't go then.

Otherwise all I'm seeing is:
"Can I do messtival, I won't use your branding?"
"Yes"
*uses branding, complaints follow*
"Sorry guys my mistake, I'll change the branding"

Again, not seeing how this adds up to the multiple massive rants you've been on, none of which appears prior to the branding issue.

How I chose to voice my concerns before making them public here is quite frankly none of your concern. You are massively oversimplifying the course of events and taking Jim's edited/redacted version of the story. I am sure that SlipperySkin and Penny will be releasing their own statement in due course which will provide us with further clarity.

My issue is not specifically with Jim's actions but rather the lack of integrity and responsibility on his part. He has not apologised. He has tried to excuse his actions and post a sob-story - one which you have clearly fallen for. He has not shown the integrity or responsibility required of someone organising any kind of event, let alone one within the fetish community.

If you believe that manufactured consent is consent then you are just as bad as he is.

I can guarantee that a number of members, models and producers would not have signed up, nor would this event have gained such a large following had the Messtival branding not been used. Regardless of whether it is free or not, that is deceptive and manipulative.

Also, for those of you who aren't aware/believe Jim is working with Penny and team due to his statement - I would encourage you to check out the thread on this post on X(/Twitter):
https://x.com/pennybankswam/status/1834552968474968328?s=46

Blocking Penny then claiming he's "working with them" is definitely a wild take. And yeah, I thought he had Penny's blessing to continue Messtival, hence why I didn't check - I trusted him at his word, which turned out to be incorrect.

I'm still wondering why after he checked with Penny on in May, he then took a screenshot on the 19th July that clearly said "different name"... why take a screenshot at that random date/time?

The following is an initial jointly written update from the full founding team at Messtival. A further, more comprehensive statement with timeline and relevant receipts will follow in due course on its own thread.
________________________________________________________

Hello everyone, we would like to offer a small update and some details after relative silence.

We would first like to offer our sincere, deeply held regret and condolences to the many Messtival crew, volunteers and presenters who, for the last month, were led to believe that their work and time at previous events meant so little to Penny that they were not informed of or asked to be involved with the next Messtival event without being given any reason for this - and that Penny did not care about them enough to tell them she had apparently handed over responsibility for the Messtival brand to a man that the majority of them had never even spoken to, and who had never previously been on the Messtival crew himself.
We can only imagine how confusing, upsetting and isolating this may have been to all of the people who saw Jim's announcement and took his claims as truth.

We are truly sorry that this did not come to our attention much earlier, and that we were not able to handle and correct this before it caused so many hard working people that we appreciate, respect, and treasure to feel rejected and hurt as a result of Jim's actions.
We hope that going forward, people will feel more empowered to trust their gut, and be confident that they can safely disregard any future claims from third parties that imply we have endorsed or given permissions to them to use any element of our business unless we have explicitly announced this ourselves from official channels.


We became aware of this event on Thursday evening when it showed up on a crew member's Fetlife feed, who lives very near the venue, and who then sent it to Penny.

Jim had not contacted Penny at any point since their conversation in May, and had not contacted SlipperySkin at all.
We do not know why Jim decided not to invite either of us to the event he apparently believed he had complete permission to run as his own brand, nor tell us it was happening so that previous Messtival attendees could be notified about a new event, nor give us the opportunity to share our knowledge and learnings from previous years to make his job easier given he has never done this before, nor help promote the event, nor support him with booking staff, presenters and models who had worked previous events.

Penny immediately texted Jim questioning his receipts, having reviewed their conversation herself and finding nothing to the effect of what he had claimed, and then SlipperySkin who had posted a request for those receipts to be published on the UMD thread.

Upon confirming that nobody within the Messtival founders team had given permission for the event to take place in our name, SS then, via our social channels, published a simple disclaimer stating "As co-founder of Messtival I need to make it crystal clear, that whatever event is due to be taking place on 28th of September has no association with myself, Penny Banks, Benny or CK. And is therefor categorically NOT Messtival".

Jim sent messages responding to SS on Thursday evening, and to Penny on Friday morning, in which he expressed the strong desire for us to handle this privately, and to know the actions we desired from him to resolve this. He stated that he didn't know what to do and just wanted to make it right.
He agreed to wait to hear our proposed resolutions, accepting that we needed time to speak with crew and discuss events before we could do this.
We honoured this wish and our public posts were limited to simple acknowledgements of facts: that we had been made aware that there had been repeated unauthorised usage of our brand name, logos and other assorted IP,that despite the claims of well-evidenced endorsement by one of the owners of the business, the event on 28th September was not organised with the knowledge or permission of the people who founded the company and facilitate the events, and that we would be attempting to resolve this privately.

We did not publicly name Jim nor did we tag any of his social media profiles, referring to him only as "the organiser".

However, immediately after this discussion Jim ceased all contact from Friday morning onwards, refusing to respond to further questions to clarify his actions at key points, and then went on to block Penny on multiple platforms, preventing any further discussion. He did not request that Penny stop contacting him, or express that he felt harangued or harassed by her contacting him in any way, before blocking her.
He had claimed to be unavailable for further discussions that day as he was attending a wedding, and we were under the impression that he would respond to our questions on Saturday when he had returned and recovered from allegedly celebrating his friends nuptials.

Regardless of whether or not the wedding exists, Jim choose to spend the interim period (in which we were putting together our proposed resolution) crafting a public statement, and releasing it. He did this without informing any of us that he had apparently now decided to deal with this in public - contrary to his initial pleas.

In our view these are not the actions of somebody who genuinely wanted to make amends and work to find an acceptable resolution amicably, and is a hurtful exploitation of the continued trust we placed in him, in good faith - after having already been subject to deceptive behaviour from him.

We are incredibly disappointed that Jim chose to mislead us into believing he had any intention of resolving this privately and feel it is likely he was attempting to occupy our time with discussions that he knew would not conclude the matters, in order to give himself time to create and publish his own statement to influence the narrative and garner sympathy to gain the upper hand in public opinion.

Despite this, we have kept to our word and sent our proposed resolution, requesting a response within 24 hours to allow him time to consider it and mindful of the need for us to share our own reciepts so that the community has all the facts as soon as possible.

This 24 hour grace period has now ended without any contact from Jim at the time of posting, despite multiple messages on various platforms to inform him and his co-organiser that we were still willing to resolve this privately, and without any acknowledgement from his co-organiser of our proposal or our messages, despite having been active on the platforms since we messaged him.

We are currently drafting our own public statement, which will take us some time considering the amount of evidence we need to lay out in a digestible and accessible format, especially as more came to light only this morning. If you have any further evidence that may be helpful for us to know, that would be appreciated (contact myself or Penny on any platform you have access to us on).

We would like to be able to move on once we've said our piece without needing to engage in further discourse; we all have our own personal, health and family issues going on which require our urgent and full attention, and this has already been a thoroughly unwelcome drain on our energy that we had no way of predicting and could not anticipate having to make time for.

We would appreciate if people who have not spoken to us directly could remain open minded, and consider that it is likely that they have not yet been privy to key details that Jim has neglected to include in his statement because they do not work in his favour.

Please also consider that we have been very limited in what we have said publicly until this point; solely because we were respecting Jim's repeated request for us to handle this privately and wanted to allow him the opportunity to be totally honest with everyone - and therefore retain some goodwill from the community and prove his commitment to honesty going forward, to improve the chances of success in his own, original ventures - rather than the facts come from us. We genuinely wanted to work out a way in which Jim could still hold a successful first event and incur the least damage to his own reputation, during such an early and pivotal point of his foray into WAM award ceremonies. We are also mindful of the resultant impact of all this on the likes of Bri, the host of the show, who we regard as a friend and ally and whom has commited no wrongdoing in this scenario.

Again, we are deeply disappointed that Jim has chosen this course of action and took advantage of our sincere attempt to come to an amicable conclusion without causing Jim further distress, due to his clearly stated requests.

Had he been upfront with us from the start of our discussions that he wanted this to play out in public, the contents of our impending statement likely would have already been posted during the course of the previous few days.

We cannot stress enough how unfortunate it is that Jim has chosen to put the ball in our court given how certain we are that this was a deliberate attempt by him to benefit from our hard work, and the reputation and trust we had built in the WAM community; all whilst taking advantage and seeking to hide his knowledge of Penny's multiple comorbid health issues, and the fact that he was fully aware these factors were the sole cause of her hiatus, not any desire to stop producing events she owned. Jim had no reason to believe that Penny's inability to run a Messtival branded event this year was due to anything except her limited mobility and other symptoms of her ongoing, chronic disabilities that have significantly worsened since Messtival was established, which will be further evidenced in our forthcoming statement.

In addition, Jim stated outright that he intends to further benefit from using our brand's name, reputation and IP by potentially expanding his usage of Messtival into a commercial venture next year, as evidenced on the first page of the UMD thread in which he details his plan to run a second, paid event.

Ultimately, with all this in mind - our sympathy has it's limits, and we feel we have already shown Jim ample grace that was wholly unwarranted and unreturned, and we will not be repeating that mistake.


With all that said, while we work on our statement we would like to share some background information about Messtival that some community members seem not to be aware of.


Messtival was established in 2018 and is a multi-disclipinary arts company, with a core focus on live events featuring performances and screenings of independent erotic and fetish films.
It is a UK based subsidiary company, held within PB Events and is jointly owned.
It is firmly a commercial venture; that is to say, it is a business, not a charity, not a hobby, and all account records are kept and submitted according to UK law with tax paid to HMRC from any profits made.

Obviously our profits are less "private island" and more "celebratory meal"; however, it is absolutely critical for us, and for the survival of our business, that our events do not operate at a loss. Unfortunately, we are millennial renters who work in the arts, grassroots community projects and adult entertainment industries - none of us are in the extremely privileged position required to be able to afford to spend thousands of pounds on a free event for the community during a cost of living crisis (although we have discussed applying for arts funding to give us a bit more breathing room next time!).


The tagline for Messtival is "The world's first sploshing film festival and awards ceremony".

Messtival is a portmanteau of "Mess" and "film festival".
It is a film festival first and foremost, created for the purpose of celebrating artistry, talent, and creativity in WAM, by screening a diverse variety of WAM films from UK and international producers. Films submitted are reviewed by a panel of community representatives according to our internal scoring processes, and then selected to form a programme that seeks to include and highlight queer, marginalised, and independent performers and sex workers.
Messtival also includes an awards ceremony, which is community and self nominated, and additionally produces digital media content in the form of free public broadcast live streams, further content from which is also distributed and sold for commercial and promotional purposes, and offers exclusive branded merchandise.
Messtival has established relationships with mainstream arts and entertainment venues, networks and funders, and secured sponsorships from companies such as MessySupplies and Cam4, as well as producing Messtival 2022 in collaboration with Ginger Johnson (winner of Rupaul's Drag Race UK and critically acclaimed artist/performer/theatremaker).

Guest presenters and special guests at Messtival have included HIV and sex worker rights activists, writers, and artists alongside notable WAM community members.
Messtival is compered and co-produced by the artist, performer and community leader Penny Banks, who is also a professional event facilitator (trading as PB Events). Co-founders/co-producers Slipperyskin and Mx Banks are award winning directors/filmmakers, SFX animators and record producers. Other Messtival crew and founding members include safeguarding and welfare experts, designers, illustrators, legal professionals, and other incredibly skilled and experienced multi-talented professionals from a range of backgrounds.

All works - including but not limited to logos, graphics, promotional copy, merchandise, broadcasts, recordings, photos, videos, and written works including policies, processes and award categories - are wholly original and developed in-house by the Messtival crew, for the sole usage of Messtival via PB Events, and as such are automatically copyrighted according to UK law and cannot be copied, distributed or adapted, whether for free or for sale.
Messtival is an established brand with its own dedicated social media accounts and email addresses, and runs an official website during active years of events.

The brand name Messtival has been used throughout the WAM community to refer solely to events run by Penny, Slipperyskin and other members of the Messtival team which consisted of a film festival, awards ceremony and other elements described above, and was not common parlance in the WAM community at any point before the company was founded. It is not a term which has been used to describe general WAM awards ceremonies, or any other WAM events produced by anyone outside of the original Messtival co-founders.

Messtival is not a splunch.
Splunch is a term which has been used widely and internationally to refer to a social meetup up for the sploshing community, regardless of organiser, for decades. No income or labour beyond booking a pub and sharing the time and location is required in order to run a splunch. There is little to no risk of financial loss or professional/reputational damage running a splunch. There is no need for a splunch to build a brand and no commercial activity or intellectual property involved. A splunch is not a business, a brand, a live performance, or a ticketed event; it is a free social hangout, held in a public venue, to which anyone can go.

Regards,

Messtival Team.

Have to admit, reading the above statement makes it seem a lot more than just a "simple mistake" over a name. This really does seem to be undermining and trying to capitalise on the work that Penny and SlipperySkin and team have done - maybe this event not for profit, sure, but a second one that might be? And it really doesn't look good with all the apparently lack of communication from Jim - if he's at a wedding and unable to really engage, why not just say that rather than putting out a statement about the "misunderstanding", that must have taken some time to write?

I hope anyone who'd put money down to be able to get to this event isn't out of pocket.

"Sploshcars"... did I miss something

Her try cover his track rename it all and lie about all of it

At least he has the time to change the name of the event, rather than address everything else going on in the statement . Maybe if he changes the name it'll all go away and people will stop asking questions!

This is very sad to see. My enthusiasm for the event was in large part based on taking it in good faith that this was genuinely endorsed by the original organisers, as stated in the first post. I probably should have indulged some healthy skepticism.

I have sympathy with errors and miscommunications from a first-time event organiser - it's a bloody hard thing to do. But other things, like the blocking of Penny and the rushing of a public statement, don't suggest acting in good faith. I think the concerns about safety, reputation and IP are all completely valid.

Unless there is a big change in communication and a proper resolution I don't think I'll feel entirely comfortable going anymore, which is a real shame. Would have been my first time meeting other messy folks IRL, so comfort and safety are particularly important to me.

Sympathies to everyone who has been through stress as a result of this.

Could agree more with you . My first time meet people as well and looking forward to . Won't be going unless delay pass onto other team

I was hoping that what had happened was an innocent mistake. The fact that Jim is not talking to people associated with the Messtival brand does not look good for his claims. I hope that those who were not aware of all of the information are now able to make fully educated decisions about their participation and that those that choose not to attend can still get refunds of any costs they have put out to get to the event.

I hope at the very least Jim reimburses people that were helping him with the event that he did not tell the complete truth to.

Hey Jim, is this your other account??

https://umd.net/forums/sploshcars_4

Well what an absolute shitshow this has turned out to be. Just because Jim didn't use a different name for the awards like he said he would. Unfortunately Jim this is on you, you said you would use a different name and then didn't. Doing that has lost alot of trust, people would have booked travel and hotels for this without knowing what was going on behind the scenes.

When I initially saw that there was (potentially) to be another Messtival I was very excited- perhaps the only thing(s) which stopped me rushing to book a train ticket was that at the time there was a risk of a strike, and, the night before I had other plans so couldn't travel down then.

Had I have had train tickets, we'd have a bit of an issue cos there's a lot that leaves a sour taste.

There's a few things I am really surprised folk don't get (esp some of the producers) - and for some of the "am I missing something..." comments. Here goes....

The concept of doing any form of Film Festival and/or Awards and/or for Splosh Content isn't one anyone holds a monopoly on. No.

But let's pretend that someone doing so was completely unknown - would folk attend? Would folk volunteer to help/host/etc ? Would people submit their videos?

Let's re go over that last one - if a complete unknown said "I'm doing a Splosh Film and Awards Festival - Send me your videos" most people would think "this is just a rando trying to get free porn"

But obviously this is not a total rando, Jim is not a total unknown, but this is of course venturing into a new field, and is of course something which does give access to content, to models, to performers, to producers, so on - in ways that may have been different if people thought it was an 'official' Messtival event (i.e. with the organisers teams backing) compared to just doing from own back.

If of course there is no difference - anyone is like, I would have sent content, I would have volunteered to help, I would have attended - etc etc etc etc
then there was ZERO reason to use the name, branding, to breach IP, so on.

While there is stuff that might not seem like a big deal. What if something goes wrong? And so much can go wrong.
Anything which causes reputable damage, by design, would also damage (actual) Messtival.

It's also boggling to me why none of the actual Messtival team were approached to (a) say the idea had legs (b) would they like to be involved cos of their previous knowledge/experience/etc

There's so many other kinda spin off examples.
Like, the concept of having a Splosh/Wam based sites/directory/forum is not a monopoly idea - but if someone set up a site called "Universal Mucky Directory" and bought the domain umd.com - and it had the same format, headings, schemes, fonts, etc. people would be rightfully angry someone was trying to fool people into thinking it was part of umd.net

I mean for any of the producers - if someone starting contacting models with your name and branding asking if they wanted to do a shoot - this would have so many alarm bells that they were using your name and branding to try to get shoots

I'm quite shocked people are not seeing how serious this all is.

This doesn't, necessarily, mean there needs to be a public crucifiction but certainly a road to putting things right - and - well - that can't exactly happen when he's blocked the very person he's wronged.

OK, I've read what was sent to me and posted here.

We have:

Changed the event title
Chanted the artwork to avoid any similarity
Changed the ticket links
Changed the event descriptions
Put clarifications of the non-association between ourselves and the Messtival event and its staff.

After discussion with my co-organisers we feel that that is a fair and reasonable response and that is what we're going to do.

This event is going ahead under its new name 'The Sploshcars' !
All tickets are still valid!
Votes are being counted as we speak!

We are two weeks out and have amazing plans and so much work to do!

See you there!

Just to avoid any further issues, can you confirm if you have been in contact with the original Sploshcars poster TheUnion? I linked the post in my question to make it easy for you to find.

This looks an awful lot like trying to ignore it and move on - have you reached an acceptable resolution with Penny and her team, or is this a unilateral decision from your side? And what are you going to do to address the loss of trust people are feeling?

Ask questions people ask you . About you lie and lost trust anyone . This event can't go forward

Not even an apology to anyone never mind the original organisers of "Messtival".

Jim. This is too little too late. You have not apologised to the original Messtival founders nor have you apologised to the community. You refuse to work with the original Messtival team and have even blocked at least some if not all of them on all platforms. You have changed the name to another existing brand of messy awards event which has occurred in the UK. Have you got their permission?

I asked some very specific, basic questions about how you intend to safeguard the community yet you continue to overlook these and the issues which your deceit, manipulation and manufactured consent have created. I will await a reply on my questions since one of your co-funders promised me as much. I can only assume you don't have the answers to the most basic of events management queries which I asked. Given the event is less than 2 weeks away this is highly concerning and further underlines why the community may be at risk from attending.

On your profile you claim to work for a safeguarding organisation. This means that you, of all people, should understand the importance of informed consent and that manufactured consent is not this.

Based on how you have acted through this entire debacle and your manufacturing of consent from a message thread in which you yourself explicitly stated something you would not do but did anyway, why should any of our (or any other) community feel safe at an event which you have put together? This goes far beyond the name and branding

it's funny - and no in a 'ha ha' kinda way - that - actually a lot of this fires up extra questions

like obviously due to this not being in conjunction with, well, not only Messtival but not in conjunction with anyone with relevant experience - that it fires up lots of extra questions like....

there are a lot of categories to get through in a short space of time
(also while there are kinda a lot of the generic categories - stuff like Overkill, Bill Shipton and Sunshine Award were very Messtival-specific)

have you discussed any banned list? been aware of any behind-the-scenes pitfalls and painpoints to put right

The personal cost seems admirable but also worryingly low.

given that there are so simple questions on the thread which haven't been asked; does it give confidence in being able to handle/delegate difficult questions on the day?

Still seems to be references up to "Messtival" on your fetlife? And are those the Messtival categories you're using for your awards still?

And do you have any remorse for the pain you've caused Penny on this, or are you trying to bury your head in the sand and move on?

Also, can Penny even see any of this, or do you still have her blocked on Fetlife? Are any other members of the team able to verify you've removed this?

yep - I'd just spotted Fetlife and came back to say...

there is a lot of work to be done, because fetlife, twitter, website, anywhere etc needs to be sanitised with any changes AND a comms go out explaining this WASN'T with the messtival backing and comms on what happened

the ticket platform should be able to send mass comms to anyone who has a ticket.

There is, genuinely, a lot to try to put right in a very short space of time
this doesn't mean it can't be done - but you've a self-created very busy couple of weeks.

You should probably change the name again to one which hasn't been used previously. Sploshcars is also a continuation of an event previously held after all

It might also be useful to include answers to these questions in the update (which I assume will be posted here and sent out on various platforms including mass e-mails to attendees):
- How do you intend to keep members safe whilst at the event?
- What vetting have you done on attendees to ensure they aren't a risk to those attending?
- What processes and procedures have you put in place for people reporting issues at the event and how will you resolve them?
- What risk assessments have you performed for the event?
- What insurance cover do you have in place for those attending?

Needless to say that a number of the above are legal requirements under HSE law - something which has a potentially unlimited liability for being in breach of

I'm curious - do you think this "NB" at the BOTTOM of the event description really cuts it in terms of being transparent about how you tried to steal the branding and company from Penny and co, lied to the community about having her permission, failed to invite her to the event you "had her blessing to hold" and blocked her on all platforms when trying to resolve the matter?

Following up on MessyBratz post - it's my understanding that the voting/nomination form contained branding around Messtival 2024. Has everyone that voted and was nominated been informed that this is not actually Messtival? Does the vote need to be re done using the new, correct branding?

I know SploshMuffin has since revoked her nominations for these awards - I'm assuming this will be factored in and that voting will be re-sent with updated nominees?

I guess with people giving permission to Messtival 2024 to show their videos, and their nominations etc, does this all need to be redone under the new Sploshcars 2024 event, so everyone involved has given their informed consent to be nominated or to have their videos shown?

I think the only way this SHOULD be handled is that all previous nominations should become null and void and the entire process (nominations and votes) be re-done under the new branding (which I assume will ultimately not be Sploshcars since that name also implies a continuation of a previous event). All copies of footage shared with the organisers should be deleted by the organisers in line with data protection requirements since those providing the footage did not have informed consent.