LATITUDE AT 20 the confidence in our audience to know there will be an audience for it. It feels like a real privilege, there ' s some amazing writing in there.”
The 20th anniversary edition will also see the return of poetry to Latitude, with Luke Wright; a performance poet who has been at every Latitude and curated and hosted the poetry tent for many years.
“ For a long time, Latitude was the biggest gathering of poets outside of Hay,” says Taylor.“ Over time the spaces and the offerings change to make room for emerging talent and mediums. In my first year with Latitude Melvin asked,‘ Is there anything you want to do that ' s new for the festival? So I said,‘ We should put in a podcast stage’. At the time live podcasts were really just becoming a thing. Fundamental to the lineup on all the art stages is the idea that Latitude is a place where we allow people to discover new things.”
Comedy has been a major element of the festival’ s offering since the outset but in 2021 it reached the hallowed turf of the Obelisk Arena, where Bill Bailey played the event’ s main stage.
“ I was on the FOH tower, waiting at midday on the Sunday wondering if anyone was going to come, and of course they did – the field filled up completely,”
says Taylor.“ Comedy reached a critical mass, in terms of size, long before I started working at the festival and it ' s just stayed at that high level ever since.”
“ There are years, such as this year for the 20th anniversary, where we try to make the comedy lineup really special. Trying to do that, at a festival that in the past has regularly had one of the best comedy lineups in the country, is never easy,” says Taylor.
While her focus covers pretty much everything outside of contemporary music at Latitude, there are partners responsible for their own zones. They include the Trailer Park, and the team responsible for the multi-stage Lavish Lounge Arena who have worked at the festival since its inception.
Having impressed with a hugely popular debut science offering last year, The Cosmic Shambles Forest of Science and Culture will return to Latitude this year. Independently curated by the team at The Cosmic Shambles Network, which includes comedian and broadcaster Robin Ince and director Trent Burton, at the core of the Cosmic Shambles Forest will be The Apollo stage. It is set to host a programme of live talks, podcasts, music, panels, performances, family content and late-night screenings. Having snuck in last year to witness proceedings, Benn says he was both surprised and delighted by what he saw:“ When I arrived there were four geologists on stage talking about different pieces of rock. The tent was completely full, and at the end they asked for questions. Hands went up left, right, and centre – everybody had a question about a particular rock. I thought,‘ This is incredible. We ' re at a festival where we have got people wanting to watch Fat Boy Slim but also loving the fact that they ' ve got somewhere to talk about rocks and stones’. It was so good. I thought,‘ Why haven ' t we done this before? This has to be a permanent fixture from now on’.”
Post-pandemic liftoff
No festival proved immune from the impact of Covid-19, but with Benn having spent the pandemic period relentlessly lobbying government to support the industry, and being instrumental in the Events Research Programme, it was doubtless well deserved that Latitude became the first full capacity festival to run after the Government lifted restrictions.
While the likes of Wolf Alice, Chemical Brothers and Bombay Bicycle Club lit up the main stage, the atmosphere throughout the festival was unlike any this writer has experienced. For Benn and his team, it was no less memorable.
“ We ' d done the first two test events in the world; one up at Liverpool’ s Sefton Park headlined by Blossoms and a 10,000-capacity Download as a camping test event. I ' d been given permission to do Latitude as a test event even if the restrictions hadn ' t been lifted, which was remarkable because that was going to be 40,000 people.
“ It didn ' t make any difference in a way, because literally a week before the festival was due to run the government lifted their restrictions, and Latitude became the first full-size festival in the world to happen post Covid.
“ It ' s a highlight of my life; putting on those three events, they were so important. The event industry, in a wider sense, is populated by people who
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