I’ve been awfully silent on this blog for a while but I’m sure you can sympathise. Third term, three weeks until the festival, I’ve barely had time for my own family of late. But over the last few months there have been some highlights here at AF towers which have gone partially un-documented.
First of all, I was blessed last term with the sweetest gesture from the team. We’d had a particularly stressful few weeks programming and I’d been travelling from Portsmouth to London twice weekly (throwing in quite a few trips to Cardiff as well) and the team decided to cheer me up and lift my spirits by holding a surprise party for me. There was cake with my name on it, tea, biscuits, crisps, party games- all the things that I love the most (and it was followed by a really good pint of a de-licious ale.)
We’ve also moved into the Centre for Creative Collaboration which was a really significant and exciting step for me and for the festival team. I know we’ve written about it before, but I can’t stress how amazing that space is, every time I go in I meet another really incredible person. (I encourage you all to come along to Tuttle Club, every Friday from 10-12 in the space. You can come and have a cup of tea with us anytime.)
I also had the privilege of getting together with our course leader Karl Rouse and some alumni from the course to talk about the last five years of Performance Arts. We were able to discuss so much about the history and future of the course, and the festival. It was a brilliant juncture as well to gather advice from the people who have lived through-and survived- the beast that is the festival.
Most recently, I’ve been trying to open the festival box office, which has been an extremely stressful experience to be really honest, but now it is concluded and looking at it retrospectively I know it has been a really important journey for us as a team to go on, and an invaluable experience for an aspiring producer. The decisions we made have helped to put the cherry on the cake of what I believe to be a festival truly for and about its audience and the artists involved- it’s going to be cluster funkin’!
This blog was written by Laetitia Clarke!