Go behind the scenes at a summer festival

Be it a labour of love or a professional day-job, there’s no denying the gargantuan work that goes into organising Ireland’s seemingly ever-expanding array of arts festivals.

No mid-size Irish town seems to be without its annual arts festival these days. Some trade off their injection into the local economy, boasting of “bed-nights” and estimated cash yields for local businesses.

But an arguable drawback of putting a figure on our so-called creative industries is that there’s a tendency to view festivals first and foremost as a cure-all for a flagging local economy. Run in this spirit and without a creative vision, they can become carbon copies of each other, a proliferation of corriboard signs at the entrances to rural towns in the summer months featuring the uninspired line-ups, and ubiquitous family fun day.

Others are inspired and inspiring, showcases for innovative multi-disciplinary arts.

Mark Graham is the man who wrote the book on Irish festivals, literally: for three years, he visited three festivals a week and the resulting book, A Year of Festivals in Ireland, is a first-hand account of the best and worst that Irish festivals have to offer.

He says it’s the people that make a festival and that even small-town offerings can be redeemed by what he terms the “Father Ted-ness” of them. This year, Graham’s top music festival recommendations are Body and Soul, Vantastival, and Townlands Carnival, three festivals with a similar ethos, going the extra mile to programme arts beyond just music and collaborating with visual artists and street performers.

“It’s their programming, and that feeling that they’re not existing solely for the purpose of making money,” he says.

“There’s a sense of community about them.”

Having seen the best and the worst of festivals all over the country, was he ever tempted to organise his own?

“Absolutely, categorically no,” he says, laughing.

I’ve asked people why they do it, and they tell me they love seeing people having a good time, but I think they’re mad.

There are many notable success stories. Fastnet Film Festival in Schull recently had its tenth event and has built an impressive annual programme more by attracting filmmakers than punters. Carlow Arts Festival recently featured literary heavyweight Margaret Atwood among an impressive line-up of multi-disciplinary events.

The behemoth of Irish music festivals is, of course, Electric Picnic, run by events management company Festival Republic, itself partly owned by MCD and entertainment multinational Live Nation. Aiken Promotions runs Cork’s Live at the Marquee, and the Vodafone Comedy Festival, among others.

The spending clout of these large commercial forces means smaller independent music festivals have to compete for a slice of the pie when it comes to their all-important headline acts. The cost of booking a top-tier band is a closely guarded secret, running to many thousands of euro. At the other end of the line-up, many young bands play for free, or in exchange for event tickets.

Insurance for a medium-sized weekend event can also cost several thousand euros, with industry

figures recently warning that it can be a crippling cost. Throw in equipment hire, staff, security, etc, and you have a big pile of guaranteed expense before the even can run.

Sam Beshoff is at the helm at Townlands Carnival in Macroom, the 4,000-capacity, independently funded music festival that is in its fourth year. “We’re trying to bring international acts to a country village and it’s really hard to compete in a market that’s 80% owned by MCD and Aiken,” says Beshoff. “Of the acts I try to book, I get about a fifth.”

There are some supports available to arts festivals. The Arts Council runs a Festivals Investment Scheme offering grants of up to €35,000 to small and mid-size festivals, as well as providing discretionary funds to local authorities.

Fáilte Ireland provides marketing grants for festivals that can prove they have international appeal and will draw overseas visitors; last year it invested €2.3m in 33 festivals and events.

Creative Ireland runs a scheme with grants of €10,000 to €70,000 for “connecting communities”, and can support festivals that emphasise community participation in creativity, culture, and the arts.

But for festivals like Townlands, which has never been given funding, ticket sales and sponsorship deals are the way to offset costs. Beshoff says its annual budget is split three ways between programming, staffing, and security, and infrastructural costs for things like lighting, PA, and toilets.

This year, Beshoff struck a sponsorship deal with local brewers Rising Sons, which he says is a good match; he’s not a fan of the ethos and aesthetic of big corporate sponsors. Inspired by the UK’s Boomtown Festival, Townlands Carnival aims for a participatory approach.

“I’ve never forgotten my first festival experience, and that’s why I do it,” says Beshoff.

You get butterflies with excitement. It’s a few moments you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Not everyone’s in it for the money.

Louise Tangney runs Vantastival in Beaulieu House in Drogheda with her husband, Benny Taaffe. Their campervan-friendly music and arts festival takes place for one weekend each June, but it’s a year-round job: She takes two months off following the festival, and then sets about planning the following year.

Tangney handles the administrative side, juggling her work with care of the couple’s three small children, while her husband works on the practical on-site elements.

“The creative vision is Benny’s, but he can’t send an email to save his life,” she jokes.

They ran the first Vantastival on a €3,000 credit union loan in 2010, having been warned that it takes a festival at least three years to start making a return. It was a real labour of love, and very hard work.

“We lost money for the first few years, but a little bit less each time,” says Tangney. “The workload was enormous, and every year I swore I’d never do it again, but I did, and eventually we got over the line and were able to start paying ourselves for the work. Now it’s my only job, but for a long time I had to work elsewhere while doing Vantastival on the side.”

On top of the financial and organisational pressures, festival organisers face one particularly Irish factor with the devastating ability to make or break an event: The weather.

Vantastival suffered a wash-out in 2015 when it was faced with 26 hours of torrential rain, and this year’s event was held in brilliant sunshine.

Townlands has also suffered from unpredictable weather. In the words of Beshoff: “The biggest challenge of all is the weather; the weather will make or break us. You’re playing with the gods.”