THE UK ARTS FESTIVAL INSIDE AND OUT: UNDERSTANDING ITS PEOPLE, PURPOSE AND PLACE

Why do you bother? Quite a question to ask a room full of festival directors, gathered for a conference to discuss the future of festivals. Why do you bother doing what you do? The pay is poor, the hours are long and the funding pot seems to shrink by the day. So: why bother? The initial response as the room begins to buzz with thought is nervous laughter and blank looks: isn’t it obvious? they seem to say. But slowly, words come to the surface. We make a difference. We bring communities together. We are providing work, helping colleagues and enabling one another. We bring events to the people, in their local areas. We create experiences. “I would have liked to have something like that for me,” someone pipes up — and even quite simply: “I love the music!”^[1]

The value of the arts is often questioned and has been ever since the earliest days of public funding.^[2] But measurable factors alone cannot give the answers to these questions. Success in this sector cannot truly be defined by numbers or balance sheets: emotions and feeling must be employed to convey the importance of the arts. Amongst others, William Morris in 1894 and Winston Churchill in 1938 in their respective addresses to art school communities are quite clear on this.^[3] The answers given by the festival directors at their conference convey, too, some of the unmeasurable reasons that the existence of the arts is essential.

This research explores arts festivals from multiple perspectives, looking at both the measurable and the unmeasurable, working to understand the people, purpose and place of festivals. The thesis makes contributions to knowledge in two specific ways: firstly, by looking at the inner workings of arts festivals in the UK, considering the make-up of teams, the leadership practices and the ways in which human relationships with festival history might affect interactions with festivals today; and secondly, by considering the position of arts festivals in the UK within the context of the development of the Arts Council, public funding and cultural policy. Data collected from my interview participants (from festivals across the UK) has driven the direction of the research, and other primary sources — such as reports, meeting minutes, cultural policy documents and magazine articles — have helped to situate it within the cultural, social and political landscape. 

^[1] Responses from festival team members at the Everyone’s Welcome session with Lucy Kerbel of Tonic, at the British Arts Festivals Association Annual Conference, 18–19 November 2024, Bristol Beacon

^[2] “The government gives £50,000 to help wartime culture. What madness is this? There is no such thing as culture in wartime!” This was The Daily Express‘s reaction to the announcement that the Government would invest in the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) — discussed on p19 of Saturday Night or Sunday Morning, Ken Worpole, Geoff Mulgan); 

^[3] William Rees-Mogg, The Glory of the Garden 1984; interview with Helen Marriage Cultural Leadership in Practice; “…the public in general must be interested in Art; it must be a part of their lives; something which they can no more do without than water or lighting.” William Morris, Birmingham School of Art address 1984, page 2. / “The Arts are essential to any complete national life. The State owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them…” Winston Churchill, Royal Academy of Arts address 1938