WOMAD
Will the festival’ s audience capacity remain 40,000 at Neston Park?
We ' re in the process of applying for a licence for a reduced capacity of 25,000. The intention is to stick with that, so we don ' t create a platform for 25,000 and when it sells magnificently we go back up to 40,000. There ' s a sense that 25,000 is the right number for the kind of show we want to create. If you look at other festivals that are currently successful, that seems to be where they ' re sitting in terms of their capacities, certainly among the few remaining independents. You get the sense that it is where the industry is going; smaller is better. There’ s a new generation of 3,000 to 4,000 capacity festivals being organised by young teams for their contemporaries and that ' s the kind of energy that we ' re looking for.
By moving to Neston Park, WOMAD remains in Wiltshire. Was that the main reason for choosing the site?
The very first site we visited was Neston Park, having been introducted via someone who knew the family. They said,‘ It isn ' t the sort of thing they usually do but they ' ve been to WOMAD and they love it’. So, we went down to see them and the site. Everyone who has been there says,‘ It’ s a beautiful place and there ' s a real energy to it’, and that’ s not just hippie nonsense – it’ s a remarkable place. We then did a tour of the south west, and as far up as Cambridgeshire, looking at potential sites. The deciding factor wasn’ t just that Neston Park is up the road from the office, which is helpful, but that the owners weren ' t just looking for a festival, for an income stream, they only wanted WOMAD.
The market is extremely challenging for independent festivals. Clearly you have the backing of Peter Gabriel but how else is the event being financially supported?
The UK WOMAD festival is the only festival we do internationally that does not have support from the country’ s government.
The way that it has worked historically is we have been able to use the surpluses income from our international portfolio of events to support the UK event in the difficult years, but what we ' re now seeing internationally is the problems that are hitting the UK independent festival market are hitting the international market for our events. The reality of that is that we are having to manage the event differently because we have less income. One of the reasons for the changes to the UK event is that our global income has reduced, and our UK income was never at the level we required, so we ' re now having to adjust to that.
WOMAD was the second major event to use Ecotricity and Grid Faeries 3MWh clean energy battery to power a stage, what key sustainability steps are to be taken at Neston Park?
It was great working with [ Ecotricity CEO ] Dale Vince and [ A Greener Future CEO ] Claire O ' Neill and their teams last year on that project. We were all learning and in the end it was a huge success. We would love to use the battery again. Because Neston Park was a commercial dairy farm, there is an existing power supply there that will enable us to power a stage or two from renewable energy
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