IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Rupert Bassadone
Born into a family of events operators , Rupert Bassadone gained his first taste of working on a festival as a nine-year-old . The vast amount of experience he has gained since includes 18 years at WOMAD where he is head of operations . Here , the Ops People MD and founder of Event Site Design reflects on a fascinating career path and looks to 2025 with great optimism
What was the first festival you attended and did it have a lasting impact ? I was born into the events world ; my parents had a circus , and it would travel to many places including festivals each year . My dad was a builder , and after the circus finished , every year he would work on Glastonbury , so I assumed that everyone was just doing it part time to get away from their real jobs , and that there wasn ' t this whole industry involved in it . When my dad informed me that people do it as a career , I said ‘ Wow . Okay . Where do I sign up ?’.
When did you get your first taste of working on an event ? I was given my first two-way radio at a festival in France when I was nine years old . The festival wasn ' t doing very well with ticket sales , so the theatre company I was with realised this and decided to take ownership of the gates to get as much money as they could for themselves , because they were the biggest act there .
I ended up becoming a runner for them , and that gave me the bug , it was a good adrenaline rush .
What was your first major role ? It was with WOMAD Festival , and that came about from a family friend knowing the site manager . It was an assistant site production role in 2007 , which was one of the wettest years on record . It was a crazy baptism of fire . That year at WOMAD made people and broke people . There was mud everywhere , people were crying , we ' d lost buggies in puddles six feet high , and we were using a boat to get down one of the fields . I was told I was unflappable , but I was just ignorant to what normal looked like , and so because of that I got away with it and was asked back . Seventeen years later I ' m still there .
What has led you to work at WOMAD for so long . It must be a great event to work on ? I ' m always told by the other site crew , and others that work on lots of other big festivals , that WOMAD is very different . I absolutely love it . It ' s the ability to be able to plan something that big and see it come to life , but also when stuff doesn ' t go well it ' s being able to make decisions that really change the path to whether the festival is successful or not .
It ' s been a difficult couple of years for many festivals but what excites you most about the year ahead ? We ' ve got some great things that we ' re quoting on , and there ' s obviously some big sporting events on the calendar coming up , so there is a lot of excitement . A lot of festivals have closed recently , and while that is really sad to see it means the industry isn ' t as saturated . The reality is , that some of the events that can ’ t continue are the ones that shouldn ' t be continuing . Ultimately , there will be less of them , and that ' s only going to help those that remain . The clients that we ' re working with are saying ticket sales are looking really , really , strong . There ' s a couple of festivals that we
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