Our Handmade: Festival Director John Helps
As the festival approaches we thought it might be interesting to give you an introduction to the team behind Handmade and what they’re looking forward to at this year’s festival. This time, Festival Director John Helps.
What has your contribution been to this year’s Handmade?
I book a good chunk of the music programme, put the festival’s branding together, run all the things we have on the internet, pull the whole festival team together and deal with about a billion little details that you’d never imagine were involved in running a festival… but mostly my job is to panic about ticket sales until about three days before the festival and try not to have my brain melt out of my ear in the interim. There is a point in every festival cycle where i just start wishing it was the 4th May already - but that all disappears once we actually get to open the doors and the festival ‘exists’ for three days.
What do you think makes the festival important?
Initially I just wanted to create something that Leicester could pull together around - when Summer Sundae existed everyone that was involved in the city’s creative communities would go down and hang out, watch some bands and come up with ideas and plans for the next 12 months, and i didn’t want us to miss out on that if it didn’t exist anymore. We’ve always tried to involve as much of the city’s arts community as possible so that it would become something of a focal point in the city’s calendar and something to look forward to and for young musicians and artists to aspire to be a part of. More than that, though, hopefully it starts to represent our city on a national scale and puts us back on the musical map a little bit in years to come.
What’s your favourite memory of previous years events?
Weirdly, when the power cut out during Tall Ships’ set downstairs at Firebug the first year we ran the festival. It was simultaneously terrifying and hilarious. Fortunately Matt (Kirk, Festival Director) got it back on pretty quickly, but to be stood in the middle of a huge crowd of people watching one of your favourite bands on the final day of the festival is always hugely rewarding.
Which three acts are you most excited about seeing at this years festival and why?
This is always a very difficult question to answer… Peter Wyeth is always one of my favourite musical experiences - he uses a loop pedal, found sounds, an acoustic guitar and all sorts of other things to make beautiful soundscapes and songs. Waking Aida are a band i’ve been working with for a little while now - my label (Robot Needs Home) put out their album last year, and it’s amazing, so i’m always excited to see them. Of the headliners Future of the Left. They were amazing at Tramlines last year. Also Tall Ships again. Sorry, that’s 4.
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