The briefing will consist of two presentations; one from Lisa Schwartz of Philadelphia Folk Festival. Lisa is the Festival & Programming Director of the Festival, the oldest continually-run outdoor music festival in North America. Each year the event welcomes over 35,000 visitors and presents over 75 hours of music across 8 stages. In 2020, the festival had to make the decision to present a fully digital interactive experience, complete with multiple streams of curated music, chat features, campfire open mics, Zoom campsites, craft show, food and merchandise tents.
Lisa will talk about their experience in 2020, how they remodelled the festival’s business, what they learned from presenting an online festival and how they’re moving forward this year and in the future, post COVID 19.
The second presentation will be from Manon Rees O’Brien of Tafwyl Festival. Manon is the Chief Executive of Menter Caerdydd, which is responsible for organising Tafwyl in Cardiff. Usually held in Cardiff Castle, the event attracts up to 40,000 visitors over the course of a week of fringe offerings and the festival weekend in June each year. Due to Coronavirus, Tafwyl presented a free digital festival in 2020, and again this year, with live-streaming of musical performances as well as a wide variety of discussions and workshops for people of all ages. This year, Tafwyl was also selected as a test event with a live audience of 500 people invited to Cardiff Castle, for the evening performances, which were also live-streamed on the AM platform.
Manon will talk about her experience of organising and staging Tafwyl during 2020 and 2021, the issues they faced and the lessons learned, and how it will affect Tafwyl in the future.
There will also be an opportunity for a question and answer session with the presenters and Arts Council officers.
If you would like to attend, then please let Helen Williams know via email (helen.williams@arts.wales) and she will send you a Zoom link. Welsh translation will be available.