The VAULT Festival caravanserai is well and truly rolling now, and I’ve come back from Poznan full of energy to make VAULT 2015 the fieriest, fiercest and fullest festival London’s ever seen.
I was selected to join 40 Festival Directors from around the world last week for the Atelier for Young Festival Directors (click to find out more). We learned from the absolute royalty of Festival-makers, including Mark Ball, Nele Hertling (click to read my blog) and Robyn Archer, about the entire cosmos of arts festivals.
The job of a Festival Director is to engage a temporary city in a temporary thrill, to make a lightning bolt of conversation, and to sharpen the cutting edge of that conversation against the grind of people’s lives.
That’s what VAULT is for. It will change you. It will listen to you. It will frighten you. It will boggle you. It is The Zahir.
In two editions, VAULT has gone from a twinkle in the HAC eye to a titan in London’s calendar, attracting 22,000 guests in 2014 – and next year, with our collectors eye for the bizarre and the beautiful, we’ll be bringing more of the nation’s finest young artists to new audiences here in the capital.
We do have a mission. It’s about equality and honesty, above all else, and then it’s about people. And that’s clear in the way we’ve built the festival, and the way we try to treat people who work with us or who engage with our work. It’s our most exciting project. Please don’t miss it.