'When I got the theatre-festival job, a few people asked, Is that a full-time position?'

FESTIVALS SEEM to appear out of nowhere, in a flurry of press releases, launches and then the events themselves.

The dark Irish winter couldn’t be further from the atmosphere of some of Ireland’s best-known events, but that’s when all the groundwork gets done. Right now, festival directors are trawling through spreadsheets, stuck in meetings and frantically filling out all the forms necessary for the 2012 calendar to fill up. Far from taking time out, it’s now, in the pre-Christmas flurry, that leading cultural events take shape. So what are those in charge of them doing right now?

Willie White

Artistic director and chief executive of Dublin Theatre Festival

“It’s funny: when I got the job a few people asked, ‘Is that a full-time position?’ People see the festival as a two-and-a-half-week thing, but there’s an incredible amount of planning involved. The day after the festival this year, there’s technically a day off, but then budgets are signed off, there’s loads of reports to be done for various funding agencies, be they national cultural agencies or tourist ones, and then the applications for Dublin City Council and the Arts Council and so on have to go. At the same time, we have to get out and about and look for [theatre productions] internationally and talk to local artists.

“We just finished our title-sponsor relationship with Ulster Bank, so we are actively looking for sponsors for next year’s programme. That takes up a lot of time.

“I travelled a lot in November. I’ve just come back from New York from a fundraising event, and I’ve been in Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, London a couple of times. I’ll go to New York again in January, and then either India or Japan in February.

“My days are permeated by meetings, internal communications about various things. There’s a lot of administration, managing relationships with stakeholders and funders, being in the office answering a lot of mails, attending performances, meeting artists, participating in networking meetings, meeting prospective funders – corporate or cultural – and researching their work. The programme has to start firming up around April, then we try to lock it off, and then we go into design. Certain elements of the programme will be locked down and international artists will be committed, but some more local work will get confirmed much closer to the lock-off point.

“I’m boundlessly optimistic. It’s a venerable old festival that has the capacity to do what it has always been doing and, notably this year, to include strong work from new artists. That was the signature of the festival this year. It showed that we’re not locked into one mode of theatre-making and that there are lots of different types of theatre, and the festival is elastic enough to accommodate that broad range.

“There’s a lot of negativity around right now, but I feel so enthused and excited about Dublin. This is a city where our narrative is one of resilience and triumph over adversity. There’s a burgeoning energy in the city, and the festival is one of the conduits that can channel that.”

Jane Russell

Chief executive of Cat Laughs Comedy Festival, in Kilkenny

“It’s unusually busy at the moment. This year we did Kilkenomics as well as Cat Laughs, so now each half of the year has a festival in it, so we go through the cycle twice. Right now I’m finishing claim submissions for Fáilte Ireland for both festivals and looking forward at the submission for next year, so there’s that invisible administration happening. That’s one side of it. Then our artistic director would be looking towards programming for next year, so the whole shape of the festival is taking hold. With big international acts, their diaries are filling up, so you have to get on to that.

“Then we’ve put a tender out for our website. Seven per cent of our sales are online, so the website is a huge linchpin. We’re looking at overhauling that, shortlisting people and getting that up and running. That all has to be done by early January to go on sale in March, so that’s a key focus for us at the moment. We’re also looking at sponsorship opportunities. The annual look-around for funding is a whole piece of the puzzle as well. Anything that we do that has branding, we have to take sponsoring into consideration, so all those conversations have to happen now or before now.

“There’s a lot of case-making to be done on behalf of festivals. They only have that window of visibility from going on sale to actually happening, so you do spend a lot of time making the case for the benefit on the community and the general area.

“So many people say to me, ‘Do you not just bang up a few posters?’ They think you’re sitting on your backside for six months and doing nothing, but it’s the boring but necessary stuff that matters: the financial stuff, planning bits, getting things together for the board, getting feedback. The nice end of it is looking at the potential big names or the unusual shows you might be able to put on. The different and standout things start to take shape earlier because you have to spend time on them.”

Tom Creed

Festival director of Cork Midsummer Festival

“I’ve spent time over the last few months reconnecting with the city, looking for ways we can work with other arts organisations and community organisations in the city. The last month has been very much about funding applications. So we’re preparing our funding applications for the Arts Council, for Cork City Council, for Fáilte Ireland, the European Union. In a way, it’s bracing ourselves for all of the activity that will need to happen in the New Year.

“So far this week I’ve spent time having a lot of meetings in Cork about the programme, staff meetings about fundraising, talking about diversifying our sources of income, trying to increase things like the friends’ and patrons’ schemes, sponsorship, donations and things like that. We’re doing a lot of preparation to roll into January. Yesterday was a full day on our marketing strategy.

“I’m thinking about projects for 2013 and 2014 as well. Come the new year, I’ll be in New York, Vancouver, Australia, at festivals, seeing work and spending a lot of time on the ground in Cork. January and February will be when we confirm all of our funding and see which of the projects that we want to do can happen, and then it’s about delivering our marketing campaign. As soon as the marketing campaign for 2012 is delivered, I’ll be doing the programme for 2013, even before the 2012 festival has started.

“Over the last while I would have been in Edinburgh, at the Manchester International Festival, at a street-theatre festival in Rennes, a festival in Cologne, site-specific work in Zurich, an amazing children’s music theatre festival in Lille. It’s about going to see individual shows but also to see how other people do festivals, how other festivals engage with cities.

“The programme that we have on paper and in email accounts and in our heads right now, if we’re able to realise that programme in June next year, I’ll be really proud. When we’re sitting there going through receipts or trying to make a budget balance for a funding application, we have to remind ourselves that everything we do is about creating opportunities for artists and audiences to meet one another. All of the administration and travel and meetings are all to that end, and if we’re not creating opportunities for artists to show work and for audiences to experience it, we’re not doing our job properly, so that’s the focus. When you’re buried under a pile of spreadsheets, it’s useful to remember that.”

Paul Fahy

Artistic director of Galway Arts Festival

“The amount of people who say to me, ‘God, you must be enjoying your down time.’ What should be perceived as quiet time is actually our busiest. If we close the office for Christmas without some kind of structure on what the festival will look like, I’d be very worried.

"You don't feel 10 months coming around, especially if you're producing new work. Those projects could be in the pipeline for two years. For Misterman, that was in the making for two full years before it happened. Enda Walsh was writing the script, and both his and Cillian Murphy's time is precious, so you work around people's diaries and things are often a very long way out. Things that I may have initiated last January are coming into fruition now for July 2012.

“Right now, I have a good structure on the theatre and dance programme, but some things will always fall through some cracks. If 75 per cent of where I’m at now is realised by the time the programme comes around, I’d be happy. I’d travel a lot between August and February, researching and looking at work. Some years can be easier than others to put together, but, whatever the circumstances, some things can’t happen, so you have to have other things up your sleeve, things you’ve seen, to fall back on.

“You’re constantly juggling, but that’s the nature of festivals.

“We operate on a very small core staff, with four full-time staff, so the amount of stuff that needs to be done by that small team, year-round, is huge. There’s so much plotting and planning because the structures have to be in place by February. The Arts Council decision is in February, so it’s a very tight turnaround. You’re taking calculated risks. It would be great to be told in February what we’d get in 2013 as well. For us, we’re used to it, but a lot of my colleagues in the UK and Australia are told what funding they have over three years. They’re always amazed that you can turn around a festival a few months after you’re told how much money you have.

“You’re always trying to second-guess what kind of spend people will have, because it’s all disposable income. This year we upped the trend a bit. We had a good year where other festivals might have found it harder. But you never know from year to year how it’s going to be. We’ve always found when Ireland has qualified for a major tournament like the European Championship next year, people are out spending money in pubs and so on, so those kind of years are harder years to push your box office to what you need to achieve. You’re constantly trying to weigh up that stuff in terms of projections.

“It’s almost impossible to train to run a festival. I’ve always been very interested in festivals. When I was younger, that was the area I wanted to work in. You have to have as much knowledge as possible across all the arts and be able to juggle, which is key.”