How to Build a Festival

We round up our favourite recent gigs before getting into some exciting details for our first festival, and what's been holding up a launch If you'd like to play, please get in touch with us on Instagram at Howtobuildafest or email us at howtobuildafest@gmail.com

We are joined for the first of two episodes with Jack Leather who talks us through his many involvements in the festival world, including building installations for major festivals, and what is the OOFestivals Discord (more to follow on that!)

We talk to Turncoat Billy's lead singer Jonny about the local music scene in the area we're looking to put our festival, the band's upcoming event, what makes a good experience for a band, and it was like being championed by his local MP for Christmas number 1!

We chat with Brandon from Soaked about the challenges of being independent, and the epic adventures of the band in 2024, major festival bookings for 2025. Amongst our struggles to name our festival, Brandon tells us how he named the band.

The team react to the Glastonbury and Green Man lineup posters, and then debate what we're going to call our festival, with less than perfect alignment across the gang! Last week we joined Bilal and Tilly on Festival Sounds - catch their episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3JNhYwo56DCZvXl5xS5LBa?si=T5Y3hyGiR0K_tbqsoVSwbg

After our first visit to Festival Congress, we talk about what we learned as well as gigs we've been to and looking forward to in the second half of February

The brilliant lilo's Helen and Christie kindly spent some time with Rachel and Cat talking about their favourite festival experiences, what makes a great festival to play at, and how to bring gender balance to lineups, including a manifesto for women in music! lilo have a new album in the spring and a UK headline tour in April - see you there

We recap and learn about Rockaway Beach with new guest Ali, and talk about our resolutions for 2025 and what we're doing with the podcast this year

We run through our favourite music from 2024, our top gigs and what's going on our playlist at the start of 2025. Thanks for listening this year, here's to a great 2025 - we can't wait to share what we've got in store

Cat and Rach are joined by Lee Martin, who talks all about the journey of starting and growing a new festival over the course of over a decade, shares his advice for building our festival, and talks through his newly released book from the incredible story of developing Lakefest https://lakefest.co.uk/product/festival-of-love-and-pain/

We talk through our manifesto for our festival, find some things we still need to agree on… and we've been nominated for an award! Vote for us here… https://s.surveyplanet.com/vyhvggua

The team get together to work through progress with planning our festival, what we're learning and some of the forward steps and setbacks we're experiencing. We also talk about some great gigs we've been to lately and what we thought of the new and kind of the same Glastonbury ticket process

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, and gives plenty of great advice and food for thought for those thinking about starting something new.

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 festival

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 looking to do it.

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 Festivals, Glastonbury, 2000 Trees and others to make a better experience for everyone.

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 independent music and festivals ourselves