Could We Use a Festival in Cardiff?
In the last couple of years, we've had a few companies from Cardiff going up to Edinburgh. And like most people who go to Edinburgh, these groups put on preview shows closer to home to warm up. Also, we seem to be blessed with groups of people who have the energy and skills to put on events without needing too much cash.If we picked a week that worked as an Edinburgh preview slot, could we conjure a festival for ourselves?
Obviously, we could, but the question is - why bother? If all these things are going on anyway, why go to the trouble of formalising it into a festival?
For one thing, having a festival happening encourages you to want to put something on. I know for myself that simple writer neuroticism would make me want to get something in the programme, if only for fear of being left out.
For another, it could be easier for small events to get an audience if they're part of a bigger programme and have access to easily targetable and flyerable audiences for other shows.
For a third, if you put on a bunch of plays, you're putting on a bunch of plays. But a festival sounds like a destination for cultural tourism, and that might help unlock sources of funding.
What do you think?
(ps - I'm aware Chapter have their Passion festival in the summer. What I'm thinking about is something city-wide, so that if you have a small piece you want to do, and you can get the team, and you can get some cafe bar to let you have the space, you can put your piece on by yourself, and plug into the festival's publicity & programme)
Obviously, we could, but the question is - why bother? If all these things are going on anyway, why go to the trouble of formalising it into a festival?
For one thing, having a festival happening encourages you to want to put something on. I know for myself that simple writer neuroticism would make me want to get something in the programme, if only for fear of being left out.
For another, it could be easier for small events to get an audience if they're part of a bigger programme and have access to easily targetable and flyerable audiences for other shows.
For a third, if you put on a bunch of plays, you're putting on a bunch of plays. But a festival sounds like a destination for cultural tourism, and that might help unlock sources of funding.
What do you think?
(ps - I'm aware Chapter have their Passion festival in the summer. What I'm thinking about is something city-wide, so that if you have a small piece you want to do, and you can get the team, and you can get some cafe bar to let you have the space, you can put your piece on by yourself, and plug into the festival's publicity & programme)
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by National Theatre Wales on
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Interesting Gary. One of the issues around festivals these days is that they have become part of government driven regeneration strategies. Everyone wants one, and to get ahead of the game they are ready to spend an awful lot of money. Manchester has been the most prominent recent example of that, and this year Brighton started a serious fightback. Interestingly none of these big city festivals have ever developed a truly viable fringe. Edinburgh seems to have cornered the market for that, and to be the only place that people specifically travel to to see the fringe (only a tiny percentage of edinburgh visitors are there for the 'main' festival). What has worked in some places is a very focussed 'fringe only' festival. To use Manchester again, it's worth taking a look at 24/7 festival, which uses a very specific format to generate a festival of new writing - and where you don't need to be in a company to take part.
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Permalink Reply by Gary Owen on
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Okay, so maybe the cultural tourism angle is a bit far in the future. But what about a smaller, more DIY thing that is (a) a hook from which to things that are already happening, and (b) a spur to people who are keen to have a go at putting something, even something very small on? Anyone have any thoughts about that?
And I'll take a look at the 24/7 festival, John.
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Permalink Reply by Tim Price on
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Hi Gary,
We've fantasised about a 'Dirty-Fest' for a while but it is out of our capacity I think. One way around this though is to piggy-back an already happening festival (like the Fringe did) and splinter off. The Bay Lit festival asked us to do something which we turned down, and Swn asked us to do something which we turned down.
But in future I would say, Swn is perfect to jump onto, it's a month long. It's held in february, there's nothing else on at that time to compete. It's a Cardiff-wide small venue event, and I know they would love to have Swn poetry nights, and theatre nights running alongside all the bands they put on. If we could get theatre nights, coming under the same 'stroller' ticket-wrist bands, then there's a chance some indie-banded-out audiences, might go to Milgi one night for some free theatre.
I think that's the best way forward and it would be pretty cool. It needs an 'arts' curator like Tania at Latitude to join the Swn organisers to dedicatedly book all the non-music acts. I suggest Mathile and Catherine. Problem solved.
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Permalink Reply by Matthew David Scott on
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Swn would be perfect for this, I totally agree Tim. I recently read at a music gig and it allowed me to work with a musician for my reading - it was one the the best readings I've ever done and went down really well with an audience that were very much there to hear music rather than prose. Cross pollination can really work on the smaller scale.
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Permalink Reply by Catherine Paskell on
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Is anyone else planning on going to The Small Weekend festival happening in Cardiff this weekend?
I guess this isn't exactly what you were referring to, Gary - but it seems like a fortuitous coincidence that your forum discussion was started the exact week of this event...
If anyone does manage to make it along to this, please let us all know what your experiences were like.
I definitely have a few events in mind...
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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Gould on
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Not sure. For a big city promoting/promoted festival, like Manchester or Brighton, wouldn't there have to be plenty of partnerships with business, or European money, or investment from the government. With today’s economic climate, it’s unlikely I think. Also the amount of disposable income people have to spend on festival tickets is falling….. Sorry to sound negative... maybe festivals have had their day, instead perhaps we could think with the spirit of festival but create what's next? The first year programme of NTW sounds like a country wide festival and this is new. There's still European money around, just. What are other small European nations doing? Perhaps we could start a celebration of theatre from small nations, that happens across many countries, and comes together to debate form, content, politics and also how has devolution and self government changed how people make theatre and engage with culture, (bit academic maybe, sorry thinking off top of head...) I also like the idea of a non-corporate small ‘viral’ happenings in weird and wonderful spaces, with free tickets and no set. Or, in shop fronts like what the lot that made the Sultans Elephant did in France ?
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Just another quick thought. How about working with Universities to create a series of works - perhaps programmed together or over a period of time - that are original pieces which are being thought about, studied and written about, from an academic point of view at the same time as being made for an audience. So that thinking about the work from lots of different perspectives becomes integral to the event, or series of events, right from the beginning. It would allow strong partnerships to be made between great theatre artists and FE institutions and to develop a culture of sharing. I know this happens more in Europe and I'm sure it happens in lots of places here, Forced Entertainment’s relationship with the Nuffield Lancaster comes to mind, so I’m not being very original, but just a thought.
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Permalink Reply by Ellie Carter on
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I think that we have looked externally with our festival going in recent months i.e. Dirty Protest were the only Welsh presence at Latitude last year and True/Fiction had huge success at Edinburgh. In terms of cultural tourism Welsh theatre going to London is what has been getting Welsh theatre noticed.
Looking internally is important, it is why we decided not to take work to Latitude this year, we felt it was more important to keep work in Wales.
Creating a fringe festival worries me because it can convince us that this is the place for new work; in a small, DIY festival. If new work is only presented in the context of a festival then I think it can limit where we look to put it. We should all be making work that could be considered important in it's own right and we are so why put it in a context?
Are there enough fringe producers who will be able to put in what the work deserves? When Swn / Blue Lagoon / Bay Lit festivals have asked us to put work on I felt that stretching ourselves to that extent wouldn't be fair to the work.
I like the idea of using academics to talk about the new work we are creating but that is only because it's a background I'm comfortable with, I don't know what the rest of Dirty Protest would think about it.
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Partnerships with FE institutions have been really important to us at Slung Low and the idea of a 'culture of sharing' is one we are fully committed to. We've been doing this for a few years now and have found such relationships really useful for a whole number of reasons - 'different perspectives' being just one of them. Using similar principles in terms of a whole festival is really interesting; I think the Over:Spill stuff for Spill Festival was attempting a similar thing.
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Permalink Reply by Dominic Rai on
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Perhaps a festival that is very local but international in outlook. So sharing work with other small nations is integral. I think out of this artists will create an audience that is active, excited and eager to discuss all kinds of work. I lie the idea of the work also being accessed by schools and FE sector.
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The more I think about this, the more brilliant partnerships between professional and community, companies and universities come to mind …. So, as I said, I’m not being very original, but onwards and ....
The project I work on for the RSC is a young people’s project and is in partnership with Jonathan Neeland’s department at Warwick, on a practical level it allows the teachers/youth theatre leaders involved to get a qualification. For the practitioners it allows us to develop our practise; to be challenged about what we’re doing pedagogically and encouraged to ask better questions. This is different to most freelance jobs in my experience because there is the chance to explore what we do in detail. Developing practise is common in the larger theatrical institutions but it’s much harder as a freelance artist. I agree that the different perspective offered by researchers/accademics is key. The capital centre at Warwick has an interesting partnership with the RSC, it explores acting and ensemble practise and gives students and young people access to this. As are Aberystwyth’s partnerships through CPR . In terms of a festival, I’m not exactly sure how it would work but I think there are plenty of exciting possibilities and it would be an interesting thing to discuss further.
A glocal happening would be great, (such as contacting the world), an opportunity for young people, audiences and artists from the cities and the more isolated parts of Wales to make and discuss work with people from the other side of the world would be fantastic. I think making a piece of work/theatre is the best way of creating the opportunity for debate, not just debate around theatre but on everything - wealth, colonialism, culture, religion etc etc. The collective endeavour of having to achieve something bigger than everyone, means each person starting the journey at the same place. From there, in order to achieve the goal, they have to explore all the different avenues, one way streets, roundabouts etc . (Excuse the bad road metaphor, it's early). Of course there is always danger of making the cultural equivalent of soup - bland tasteless soup at that - but the relationships and possibilities are exciting and I think it can be one of the best ways of having debate and discussion around global politics. Wales as a small, newly independent nation obviously has issues to discuss around identity, language and independence, but for me more interesting discussions are around where does Wales fit in the global picture, how is it going to position itself in Europe, (forget the UK), and the world. How is our cultural expression going to reflect our politics, values etc and the debate around this .
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Lyddon on
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I had a mooch about the web and discovered the Cardiff Festival throughout July and August. Apparently Welsh College produces the "Fringe Version" of the fest. It's too late for this year, but I could easily see the National Theatre participating in future festivals with a linked series of performances for the duration of the larger Festival, perhaps growing the current fringe across a number of performance spaces throughout the city?
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