BEN TURNER
IMS CLOSING PARTY AT DALT VILA
thought Jim would be the right person to help professionally deliver an event involving Rob and Josie’ s crazy creativity, which was constantly overflowing.
What led to you launching AIF in 2008?
It was Robbie ' s idea, he came to me and asked how we could do it. Bestival was getting on the radar of the bigger players who were fascinated by its growth, because it was done completely independently. But behind the scenes it was really challenging. At the outset with the AIF, Alison was incredible. We didn ' t know how to run a trade body, but she really grasped it because of the work she had done with AIM. I ' ve always loved connecting people, especially now with IMS, and Robbie created this crazy challenge of creating AIF, which I then took one step further with the creation of a global electronic music industry trade body with AFEM. That was a way bigger challenge to pull off, but I had learned so much from doing AIF.
You co-founded IMS in 2008 and helped launch AFEM five years later. What inspired you to create the latter?
IMS is a summit where we table and challenge the issues of the day. At IMS we were having these unbelievable conversations with inspirational outputs and actions, and then everyone would leave Ibiza and forget about them. It would all just dissipate. So that ' s when I came up with the idea of creating a body that could take those ideas and try to move them forwards.
Having visited Ibiza around 500 times, you clearly can’ t keep away. Was Ibiza always going to be IMS’ home?
IMS was Simon Dunmore from Defected ' s idea. He pitched it to Danny Whittle, Mark Netto, Simeon Friend, and a guy called Steve Hulme. At the time, all of them were working mostly with Pasha and I was the editor of the Pasha magazine. By that time, I ' d made TV documentaries about Ibiza, written a book about it, had launched the first mobile phone initiative here with Pete Tong in 2001 called Mobile Ibiza, and I absolutely loved this island. Obviously, getting Pete on board with IMS was massive; he was a resident at Pasha at the time. People joked that it was an idea formed on the rooftop of Pasha, and it kind of was. We would stand at that bar until six in the morning, dip in for some music, come back for a drink, and crazy ideas would just form. IMS was one of them. I put all my editorial experience into the curation of IMS around the narrative of exploring change in the industry and driving the culture forwards.
After the pandemic you moved IMS from May to April and have never looked back. With your Dalt Vila live show now signalling the start of an extended club season in Ibiza, how important a step was that?
IMS was held at the end of May until the pandemic struck. Ibiza had been switched off for two years, everyone was desperate to get back, so postpandemic we ran IMS a month earlier and then all of the clubs moved with us. Suddenly we had created this whole new tourism moment around Ibiza at the end of April. Of course, the island benefits from that shift massively.
How supportive have the Ibiza authorities been of IMS?
The government has been very supportive in terms of Dolt Vila, which is the location of our live event at the end of IMS. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and an absolute gift that we treat very respectfully. Working in there the right way is challenging, and we work very closely with local communities. Dolt Vila is when IMS goes from being a businessto-business event to a consumer-focused show, with thousands of clubbers flying in to go to this amazing event. It is the jewel in our crown, because it ' s just so unique and beautiful up there. I am told by restaurant owners in the old town area that it is their most profitable night of the year, which is incredible when you think how busy it is there in August.
We have invested in Ibiza, and we hoped we ' d get the tourism board involved, because IMS has proven to Ibiza that there is a real industry behind the music and it is not just people taking drugs and getting drunk in San Antonio before ending up in a club. I ' ve always been baffled why Ibiza tourism marketing only shows pictures of beaches and targets families. We all know why half the people who travel to Ibiza are here; it ' s the music, the clubs, and that whole culture that comes with it. The Ibiza tourism board has never acknowledged that in any of its marketing in the 18 years since we launched IMS, and that still disappoints me.
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