November 23rd 2010- Mole Valley

As part of my BAFA executive role I occasionally get asked advice on what's going on, or asked to speak
At talks and workshops. This evening I had the opportunity to meet a new festival and it's family!

Arts-alive is a mixed arts festival, part programmed, part open access, in and around Dorking. It is currently
Coordinated by the council and has been going for about 15 years.
Times are a-changing and Kath (the coordinator) would like to bring the festival Up to date allowing it to flourish and become an event on the World Festival map. The current set up reminds me a lot of how the Brighton Fringe was in 2001, it was part of the International festival, not the council, but it too had come to a point that to give it an identity and do justice to its performers and artists, something radical had to be done.

Arts-alive are in the very early, discussion and workshop phase at the moment, and like in Brighton, half the people were happy with the format (mostly the visual and classical arts) and the other half were up for new ideas. I gave and 'uplifting and motivational' speech about the Brighton Fringe, how the changes happened and how I founded and re-branded it into the 3rd largest fringe in the world.

I also stayed for the workshop, to submit suggestions about ideas for the future, What could change, what's new and what should stay the same. They are a really lovely group of people and it's a festival to watch. Its going through Some exciting times!

1st Nov 2010 - Edinburgh- World Festival Summit

How marvellous! My train is delayed for 3 hours and I am delighted... If you have never got the Caledonia sleeper to Scotland, you normally get on late and get off at the crack of dawn not waking up till it's pulling into the station, getting dressed in 1.5 mins flat jumping onto the station, make up down your face and your skirt on back to front, wondering if you have actually woken up yet!
So this morning I are leisurely rocking through the midlands with a cup of tea at nearly 9am!

The reason for my visit to our festival city was to discuss how to go forward With the World Festival Networks' initiative of the World Festival Summit. I was meeting Faith Liddle and Amy Saunders from Festivals Edinburgh
And Kath Mainland and Christabelle from the Edinburgh Fringe. It was a round table power house of to the point ideas, progressive strategy (Millionising- that ones for you Kath!) Conversation.
It maybe one of the most constructive meetings I have ever been a part of! We Obviously will work amazingly together, great news for the summit, great news for the Delegates and great news for the festival sector as a whole I'd say!

More will be updated on this subject soon, but in the mean time, 2 dates for your diary, august 2012 and 2014 Edinburgh, these dates could change your 'festival' life!