WOMAD
WOMAD will see more than 150 artists perform from over 50 countries
without the need for a battery. We are in conversations with Dale and hope to continue to work with them as part of the move to take the dependency away from diesel generators. Before the pandemic, we had started to be able to plug chunks of the Charlton Park site directly into a renewable energy source by laying copper cable, but, of course, copper cable is now even more expensive than running a festival!
You have headed WOMAD since 2008 and have many long serving members of the team. Will that continue at Neston Park?
Rupert Bassadone is overseeing the operations, as he has done for many years now.
He was the first person I appointed when I took over, so I ' ve worked with him for a very long time, and he is still
“ There are lots of good ideas coming in from lots of different directions.”
there fighting the good fight. He ' s a very talented, annoyingly handsome, young man. One of the things that makes WOMAD a little bit special is the experience of the team. We have crew members who have been with us for an extraordinarily long period of time. For example, site manager Steve Haddrell has been working with WOMAD for 35 years. Having people like Steve and Rupert, that level of experience on the team, is as important as having the bright, talented young people.
What does the move mean for suppliers, are you continuing to work with existing partners or are there opportunities for newcomers to get involved?
We are going through that process as we speak, and there are some areas of the show that we haven ' t put out to tender for a very long time that will be. For example, we ' re looking at the wider market for tech production. We ' ve worked with the same brilliant company for a number of years, and maybe that will continue, but equally there is an opportunity for others to get involved.
We don ' t have the luxury of just maintaining positive relationships, we ' ve now got to have positive relationships that are economically viable, which is the reality of the world we live in.
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