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p4
 You were with the
Festival almost since the beginning. What event/performance (other than the street
festival) are you proudest of? How do you feel about its termination?
There's so much I feel proud of. Parklight of course, for the way it expanded the use of
the park and we were able to offer such great support to artists to pull off big projects.
The cemetery event in 2001 - again I had that sense of being able to support a bunch of
artists and they passed that on by inspiring other people and putting on a project on a
quite amazing scale. I still have conversations with people about the magic little puppet
in the undergrowth. And Tom Geoghegan - the Vertical time artist who hung on the wall - I
can still see him there and the conversations, questioning and, yes, anger sometimes,
which went on at the bottom of that wall was electric, and inspired the festival to really
make more opportunities where people who hadn't decided to 'go into a gallery', could have
an experience of that sort of really challenging work and a forum for commenting on it,
sharing the experience. It was great fun, especially meeting Tom when he came down off the
wall each night and going for a drink. Lots of people felt part of it. All of the opera
cabarets of course and so much of the street festivals I don't know where to begin. It's
about magic moments - it's what everyone wants from their work, isn't it? and the festival
had so many magic moments. Storytelling at the campsite, Clissold man, the DJ stages, and
that film about skateboarding, the tight rope walker across from the Tup to Helsinki, or
just a memory of a woman so relaxed in the sun dancing and dancing - don't get me started.
I need to write a book!
LBH pulled the plug and effectively killed the Festival. They are also apparently
the largest single creditor. Is this not an irony? In the light of this, should LBH write
off the money they are owed by the Festival?
Of course they should and they probably will in my opinion but even if they did it
wouldn't solve this year's deficit entirely - though it's not huge. I also don't think
it's beyond the possible to imagine that the council will fund the festival in the future
- it was so obviously value for money though I hate that phrase - but in terms of
community development, cultural strategy, profile of the area and, from what businesses
are saying at the moment it was a direct and significant asset to local businesses on many
levels, from increased gym membership, house sales, to awareness raising, to 'cash on the
day'.
The Festival was criticised by some local residents as elitist and
unrepresentative of the local community. Would you care to comment on this?
What importance did the Festival place on consultation with local people,
businesses and communities? What form did this consultation take? How did this affect the
programming policies?
Hmm...I think I'll answer these two together. As an organisation, from the beginning, we
placed what sometimes seemed to other arts and community organisations, an insanely high
level of importance on consultation and there are thousands of completed questionnaires,
visitors books, reports, minutes of public meetings and even tape recordings to prove it -
but 'proof' isn't the point. I think what the festival was (and hopefully will be) trying
to pull off was a very tough thing to do - to try, through the work of artists to bring
together so many different communities - and to do it in the middle of a busy inner city
working community, closing its streets and filling its parks - so many different agendas
and it's a cliche but you'd be mad to suggest you could please all the people all the time
the arguments and balancing act that went on around every inch of space at the street
festival - you really can't imagine unless you were there. But I was there and I know that
we had at the heart of the organisation, a commitment to listening.
 Every year we visited every business
on the street at least twice and we were constantly looking for ways of widening the
consultation process. Public meetings were another way of consulting - very important but
not enough in themselves - you really have to want to listen and then to be able sift and
sieve the information, balance the differing needs, staying true to the vision. Take
Parklight, for example, there was so much fear about everything from noise pollution to a
may day riot, to concerns about the animals. In the end it was gloriously peaceful and
magical - we got letters of support from people who had been really against it. One
particularly vocal opponent stopped me in the street the day after the event and said he
was only sorry no one had turned up. It had been so peaceful he hadn't realised that
20,000 people turned up over the weekend. And he lived right next to the park. It was a
bit of a turning point.
We had other forums too, forums for programming, for thinking, for education, advisory
panels, we really tried, and actually the festival was often quoted as a very consultative
organisation. It doesn't surprise me if some people use words like elitist, though we
were trying to bring really quite cutting edge and sometimes difficult stuff into the
heart of a community - you have to expect it. You just keep talking - I'm still doing it !
Do you feel that the announcement of the cancellation of this year's street
festival may have been a factor in LBH's decision to pull out? Was it a misjudgement to
cancel the street festival? Were there other options?
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