How to Build a Festival

We’re back just in time for Glastonbury sale day, and we talk to Leo from On the Meadow Festival to hear all about the first edition of the event, and what he’s learned from putting on his own festival

We were very lucky this week to have the chance to meet Oliver Jones, co-Festival Director of Deer Shed Festival, a superb and long running independent festival in Thirsk, in the north of England that starred HTBAF favourites CMAT, deadletter, Jessica Winter, James Ngonda and Personal Trainer in 2024. Oliver talks to us about what makes Deer Shed unique, the challenges facing independent festivals...

Our unofficial End of the Road recap - the last summer festival of the year and there’s lots to talk about, including performances by Bonnie Prince Billy, CMAT, Malice K, Jalen Ngonda, Master Peace, Snooper, Brown Horse, Phosphorescent and more. The team get the opportunity to DJ and meet some of our friends from the world of festivals, and take inspiration from the brilliant community of this fes...

The gang are excited for End of the Road, and run through what we’re looking forward to including Bonnie Prince Billy, Jess Williamson and Holiday Ghosts. We talk about the Oasis reunion and our days at All Points East over the Bank Holiday weekend

Our Green Man run through - what we loved, how the festival is evolving and how we dodged the diablos. We talk about the Wishbone, the new Rising Stage, the brilliant artists we saw including Getdown Services, Big Thief, Sampha, Royel Otis and more…

We preview our favourite festival, Green Man, before its 2024 edition. Then the gang recap Deer Shed Festival and Uptown Festival as well as discussing some of what we’ve been learning for our own festival. We talk about the excellent recent new acts we’ve seen including deadletter, Tapir!, Man/Woman/Chainsaw and Ross admits Personal Trainer won’t win the Mercury Prize

Episode 18 - We catch up with Festival Sounds Podcast to talk festival volunteering, test what would convince them to try a new festival, and talk about our favourite late season festivals including Green Man, Shambala, End of the Road and Boomtown

Ross and Rach do a Quick Look ahead to Deer Shed , Truck and Tramlines all happening this weekend - one for your journey! And Ross gets confused about the Mercury list, but huge congrats to two podcast favourites, corto.alto and CMAT for their noms

Today Ross and Cat break down the Glastonbury experience from outside the fence, and then we get back to learning about how to go about starting one of our own as Rach and Cat speak with Leo from On the Meadow Festival, a brand new event taking place this year, about how he’s pulled it all together and how he hopes it will support independent music, as well as his festival experiences and why he’s...

Our last pre-Glastonbury pod, and we were chuffed to sit down with Andrew Lansley, a man who has played Glastonbury many times and also works with festivals all over the country to help build sustainability and accessibility into the delivery of the festival. We ask what it’s actually like to perform at Glasto, and dig in to some of the great initiatives going on at festivals including Cheltenham...

No we’re not going this year, but before we get too sad to talk about it, we get our early Glastonbury 2024 preview in early and share our tips and tricks for getting the best out of the week, as well as our personal lineup highlights. We run through other festivals coming up in June and talk about upcoming Taylor Swift and This Feeling events

Mark Davyd, CEO of the Music Venue Trust joins to talk to us about what the cross party Culture, Media and Sport Committee report means for independent music in the UK and why it’s a potential game changer

The gang recap their visit to OMeara to see Afflecks Palace, discuss what we learned from our interviews with Coast Festival and the band Soaked, and spend some time looking at the various initiatives picking up steam to support small venues and independent artists

We talk to one of our favourite new bands @soakedband. Lead singer Brandon tells us about how it all began for the band, how best to support growing bands, and what it’s like trying to get on festival lineups - hope you enjoy this one as much as we did

Cat and Ross sit down with the amazing John and Rachel from Coast Festival - who better to learn how to start a new festival from than the founders of the 2023 UK Festival Awards New Festival of the Year? We had an amazing time talking to John and Rachel! P.S…. There’s a small amount of swearing in this one!

The gang react to the big lineup reveals of the last few weeks, discuss the greatest band since The Beatles (according to one of us anyway), and talk about some of our favourite new artists Find our playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0OYngeOPLJPAu9jeOXEP0M?si=2FzMxSm7SaCFejYgXNFEogπ=e-WDzrtJjxRLmJ

The team are back and Rachel returns! We look back on our Les Savy Fav experience and look at what the internet has to say about likely features on the imminent Green Man lineup Find our 2024 playlist featuring all the artists we’ve talked about here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0OYngeOPLJPAu9jeOXEP0M?si=sSAjQPVCSDW34fkgdRPDCAπ=e-ZsBx7fPBQACv

We’re back! And it’s time to discuss festival lineups, new artists, and some festival cancellation news for 2024. What are we going to be doing for festivals this year?

The team talk about their favourite and least favourite experiences of the 2023 live music year, including Rachel’s favourite toilets (of course), what we thought of Glastonbury’s new Car Henge area (we are not all in agreement) and most importantly who our favourite live acts of the year were

Should festivals try and have a target audience, and what does that mean for us? And how does Cat feel about this week’s major festival lineup announcements?

We talk about a very polite Starsailor concert and try to make some decisions about the music we’re going to have at our festival. We also try and establish our favourite live songs.

The gang talk about their glasto ticket day, whether there should be a lottery for tickets, and the first things we need to work out for getting our festival up and running

The team visited a city festival to see if that was the format for us. Listen to hear what we thought - plus we caught some of our favourite artists on their autumn tours, and a bit of Glastonbury ticket fear.

Meet the friends behind the podcast! What do we love and hate about festivals and why do we want to start one of our own? Also…how do we make a podcast? Welcome to Episode 1 of How to Build a Festival

Welcome to our new podcast, where three friends try and figure out what it takes to build a festival from the ground up with no contacts, no experience and no knowledge of how to do it. Join us on our journey as we learn how it’s done, and see if we think we can have a go ourselves. We’ll be talking to a wide range of guests, as well as just chatting about all the things that we love about indepen...