Page 40 - Zone Magazine Issue 007

association of Independent Festivals awards
6 November 2015
wales millennium centre - cardiff [uk]
When I was first asked to review this event I have to admit that I had no clue whatsoever as to what it was that I had agreed to cover, but was none the less interested as I am a Dance Festival and Event Promoter anyway. I mean, what better place to rock up to with my professional photographer friend Peter Wilkins in tow and no doubt party with like minded people at a boozy event and get some semi embarrassing photographs taken of myself with some drunken event promoters, that I could use as leverage at a later date to perhaps blag myself a guestlist place or even a play or two at their 2016 events!?
Well how wrong was I? Firstly the event was being held at Cardiff’s highly prestigious ‘Wales Millennium Centre’ which is an architectural wonder in itself and looks like a town planners futurist vision of a utopian structure from the 23rd century, but built out of traditional Welsh sourced materials like slate and
stainless steel. Secondly and even more worryingly it was being held in a lecture hall, and not the huge bar that I knew that they have at the venue...but lunch was to be served in the bar, so my plans were not fully scuppered!
We arrived at 9.30am and picked up our press passes and managed to blag a goody bag each and headed into the lecture hall and joined a long queue of what appeared to be bleary eyed festival promoters lined up to enliven themselves with free coffee, water and orange juice and the smalltalk started to flow freely. It quickly became apparent that we had missed last night's awards ceremony and subsequent boozy party and were actually set for a day of serious talks and presentations from industry stalwarts and experts in various aspects of festival organisation, marketing and health and safety.
Now this may sound like a letdown to a lot of people but for me, it was like finding a mine of vital information on many aspects of festival organisation, event marketing, PR and promotion, which is essential in my line of work. After a brief introduction from the vice
chairperson of the Association of Independent Festivals (the event organisers), we were treated to talks about many aspects and areas of festival structuring that for me was an ‘edge of my seat experience,’ as you can never know too much about how to keep many thousands of people happy, safe and entertained at a large scale event that they have sometimes shelled out hundreds of pounds for, to experience just once a year.
We then broke for a rather nice free lunch at around 1am and managed to do a bit of networking with ‘like minded’ people and had a look at a few stalls that were offering various snippets of information and light chat which was all good fun, and slightly educational as a bonus. I then managed to catch up with the AIF General Manager Paul Reed for an informal interview where he was very forthcoming and extolled the virtues of the AIF and explained how it was started by Bestival and Camp Bestival promoter Rob Da Bank and has grown to represent 55 independent UK festivals within two years which is pretty good going, in my humble opinion.
40 ZONE-MAGAZINE.IE