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Ahead of the UK festival season beginning we talk to John Rostron, CEO of Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) as he and his team take over the operation of the Association of Festival Organisers following the retirement of general secretary Steve Heap. Together, the trade bodies will have a collective voice representing 202 festival promoters and event organisers across the UK.
“Steve (Heap) called me the day after Festival Congress to say he was retiring in early April. We were already closely aligned; more often than not we shared the same views and were attending the same meetings and events so it just makes sense. We offered all the AFO members the opportunity to join AIF and most of them did. Ultimately for the members it’s a charge benefit, we have a much larger pool of experience which gives organisers more strength and confidence.
If we’re asking about an issue or raising the profile of an initiative then ideas and views are exchanged by more people and businesses. We are now much more representative of the festival industry as a whole, other than the events ran by AEG, Festival Republic and Live Nation. Whilst we don’t have an exact figure for the number of festivals in the UK, we think it is around 600-700, we know that all but 50 of them are run by independents. In theory the independents should have the strongest voice but realistically it is often the people with the most money that do.
It's an exciting time for us as an organisation and we’re going to make a shift and create a fair balance in the festival eco-system. We are reliant on each other for both our audiences and our supply chain. We’ve already started to deliver webinars and training sessions with the needs and wants of the entire membership being met which is hugely positive.
Clearly mitigating festival closures is at the top of our agenda. We lost 96 festivals during the pandemic, 36 in 2023 and another 34 already in 2024. We expect a churn we’ve identified those, that’s not what this is, it’s not a steady decline, it is falling off a cliff and unnecessarily!
The organisers who are calling time on their events have done everything that they can: cutting artists, reducing production and increasing ticket sales. Even the artists’ agents are getting in touch as they’re recognising that bookings have slowed. If the government stepped in, they would 100% be okay or as good as you can possibly guarantee barring inclement weather or a national incident. We believe the solution to that is to lower VAT for festivals to 5% and have been campaigning for people to write to their local MP to raise awareness.
As an industry we’re facing a lot of issues and uncertainty. Ticket sales have definitely slowed and the gut feel is that young people aren’t attending festivals in the same way as they did pre Covid. Reading, Leeds, Parklife and Glastonbury have always been the gateway events but they sit outside of our membership so it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on. Are they missing those events that we’ve always considered a rite of passage or don’t they want to go at all? If there is a problem then as an industry we need to know and we need to try and understand what it will mean further down the line. We really need Festival Republic to share what’s going on and flag up the issues. We can’t tackle the problem if we don’t know what it is.
One solution that we are considering lobbying government for is the introduction of a Festival Pass for 18-year-olds. This is something we’ve seen other European countries offer post-Covid; Germany, Belgium and Spain give anyone turning 18 is a significant sum (200-400 EURO) to spend on attending cultural events.
For now, the work around the Five Percent for Festivals continues. Whilst we haven’t achieved our goal yet, there have been some soft results. We’re getting copies of responses from MPs that express concern about the situation and ask the right questions at the right level. Arts Council England has launched the Grass Roots Music Fund as a direct result of the campaign which isn’t a big fix but it helps.
We’ll continue talking to government and garnering all party support. You don’t attend a festival to talk politics but we know the power that events have to galvanise people, build momentum and capture the nation. We’re already seeing the narrative move from an industry conversation to a public conversation; the national media are coming to us and asking questions.
If I was sitting in Westminster, I would consider the 6 million people who attend festivals. There’s a real opportunity here to be the ‘saviour of the summer’ and rescue someone’s favourite festival.