LATITUDE AT 20 are doers, and all of my team are people that actively want to do things all of the time; they ' re very proactive people. Covid stopped their proactivity, and it didn ' t just stop their work, it stopped who they were. So for the Latitude team, staging that event and seeing it come to life for attendees and artists brought unbridled joy.”
Team players
Among the key members of the current Latitude team is lead talent booker Ed Lilo. He took over from Lucy Wood who had followed in the footsteps of Dunn.
Sharon Reuben has been curating Latitude ' s Family Programme since the inaugural event back in 2006.“ That ' s become such an important part of the festival, Sharon ' s contribution to it from day one has been immense,” says Benn.“ Adding a children’ s area was really important to me. I didn ' t set out to make it a family festival and it ' s still not like Camp Bestival, which is clearly defined as a family festival, but it was always important to me that you could bring your kids to Latitude because I ' d been bringing my kids to festivals from day one. I wanted to make it more enjoyable and easy for children to attend Latitude.
When it comes to handling production, Luke Cowdell is Latitude’ s site and production manager, who has worked on the event since the start.
Ed Lilo
Working alongside the events many key suppliers, he is responsible for helping to create the look and feel of Latitude.
“ Let ' s not beat about the bush, all the contractors had to do me huge favours on costs in that first year, because definitely not enough people turned up to meet the cost of putting on the festival by any means. Serious Stages is probably the most long standing, I started my relationship with them in 1989 at Reading Festival. They have been with me as my predominant stage builder ever since,” says Benn.
Serious Stages operation director Abbey Thomas says it has been a joy to work with the Festival Republic team to evolve and accentuate the festival landscape over the years. The biggest structure it provides is the Obelisk Arena stage using its 22m Supernova, with Latitude specific cladding, and 12m asteroid delay towers.
“ Beyond that we’ ve supported Festival Republic’ s creative development across the festival with a wide range of stages, including the tented comedy and cooking demonstrations,” says Thomas.“ We install a bridge over the lake to transport the audience into the Cosmic Shambles Forest of Science and Culture and Woodland Stage. Our crews build some quirky installations along with structures in the water to accommodate the uniqueness of the festival. These are relatively simple small structures, but, of course, we pay attention to make sure they’ re all safe and suitable in their unusual settings for the audiences and performers.”
Says Benn,“ Suppliers such as Serious, Siyan lighting, Colin Enos, and his son Phillip have been massively important to us from day one. Colour Sound Experiment’ s Hayden Cruickshank has also contributed massively to making the look and feel of the Latitude site what it is today.”
“ It’ s amazing to watch these festivals grow and flourish year after year,” says International Mobile Stadiums director Phillip Enos.“ Latitude is a special one to us as many of the structures there were purpose built for Melvin for Latitude.”
Among the others to play key roles in supporting Latitude’ s 20-year journey have been Suffolk County Council, the local blue lights services, and Henham Park’ s landowners the Rous family – who have cared for the estate since 1544.
“ Hektor Rous owns the estate completely,” says Benn.“ He has continued to support the festival, which is lovely.”
“ I am very grateful to everyone who has been instrumental in making Latitude such a success, not least Dennis Desmond and Paul Latham who were really key to it because they were the ones that gave me the support in the very early days to create what was at the time a really challenging new concept within the Live Nation structure.”
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