CAR FEST
As CarFest’ s festival director, Anjna Raheja leads a largely female team that runs one of the UK’ s largest independent festivals. She tells AAA how the not-forprofit event raises £ 1 million for charity each year, against a background of major challenges.
DRIVING CARFEST FORWARD
Afamily-focused festival founded by radio presenter Chris Evans and operated by CarFest Management Limited, CarFest is much more than a celebration of live music and motor vehicles.
Billed as seven festivals across one weekend, the broad range of entertainment on offer across CarFest’ s 21 stages ranges from chefs to celebrities, wellbeing and family entertainment to vintage pop culture.
Staged across 500 acres of farmland at Laverstoke Park Farm in Hampshire, this year’ s diverse lineup includes Travis, Squeeze, Seasick Steve, Sally Gunnell OBE and Ed Byrne.
Since the 35,000-capacity event was launched in 2012, CarFest has raised more than £ 20 million for charity partners including Rainbow Trust, Starlight Children’ s Foundation and
Teenage Cancer Trust, with 50 % of profits set aside each year for BBC Children in Need alone.
In 2022, the management of CarFest was transferred from Brand Events to the newly set up CarFest Management. Previously CarFest’ s marketing director, Anjna Raheja was appointed festival director while former operations director Neil Levine became its MD.
“ Chris Evans is the 100 % owner shareholder of CarFest, and we have regular board meetings with him. He wanted to have a team that was dedicated solely to CarFest, because at Brand we were across a portfolio of shows and splitting our time between them,” says Raheja.
CarFest Management consists of inhouse operations, marketing and sales teams. Among the key players is CarFest’ s operations director Lisa Knipe, who has been working on the event since 2016.
ANJNA RAHEJA
“ Lisa has grown up with CarFest, she started working on its years ago when it was part of Brand Events,” says Raheja.“ Lisa is an absolute delight with huge strength and resource. All our team leaders are very disciplined and incredibly detail focused, and detail is what it comes down to at the end of the day when you ' re organising an event of this scale.”
44 accessaa. co. uk