WINTER | REVIEW
Conglomerate warning
AIF CEO Paul Reed weighed in on the threats to
independent festivals from the big players…
At Congress we published our updated
ownership map, showing that just under
30% of the market is owned by two
companies - Live Nation & AEG. AIF now
represent 19.49% of the market.
Superstruct is a new entry and the second
largest UK festival operator with 6.52%
of the market having acquired a number
of festivals earlier this year including
Boardmasters, Tramlines, Victorious, and
Truck Festival.
We repeat our warning: Allowing a single
company to dominate festivals, and the live
music sector in general through vertical
integration results in a stranglehold that
stifles competition throughout the sector.
Making stories
Owen Kingston, artistic director of Parabolic
Theatre discussed the concept of being
‘immersive’
We give audiences a lot of control over their
journey. We don’t use decision trees because
that’s very limiting for consumers, as every
decision creates a wall beyond which you
can’t go, and this counters the whole idea of
being immersive. You can’t then learn, play
and be immersed.
The volunteering
“The immersive art
form does something
conventional theatre can’t
do. It’s like listening to an
album compared to going
to a festival. ”
boom
Robin Wilkinson, director at My
Cause UK says: “Emotional labour
is 90% of the job. You can be a great
administrator but you have to be
able to communicate well with
your volunteers. It’s important to
empower and enable a volunteer!
The energy and enthusiasm an
individual can bring to an event
can be a powerful force to harness!”
To create artificial structures breaks the idea
of immersion. Instead, we bend a structure
around the audience’s decisions – whatever
they might be. For example in a World War
II event, For King and Country: D-Day, we
staged a scenario about the Nazis invading
Britain. We built the drama around the
Nazis possessing a superweapon, and one
of the options was that the Nazis built an
atomic weapon, and it would be launched at
a certain point of the show.
One of the participants said: “Why don’t
we capture it and fire it back”. We hadn’t
thought of that as an option, so we didn’t
refuse the request. Instead, we improvised a
scenario in which they fire it back.
Adaptability is important, as we can truly
achieve something special. The immersive
art form does something conventional
theatre can’t do. It’s like listening to an
album compared to going to a festival. You
have the illusion of control. By walking in
someone’s shoes there’s a change that can
happen inside.
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