The Lit Fest Newsletter
Hi everyone, February is already upon us and it is clear the disruption to our indutry will carry on throughout the year. Glastonbury, that takes place at the end of June, has cancelled (and with it my gig of organising an authot tent there). This is entirely understandable - it has gigantic infrastructure costs. Other music festivals seem to be clinging on to the hope they might happen. The organisers of Slam Dunk in Leeds scheduled to take place end of May said, ‘We’ve still got some optimism”. Likewise the people behind Trnsmt in Scotland, whom hope to bring 50,000 people to Glasgow in July to watch Lewis Capaldi, are pressing ahead, saying they were very different to Glastonbury in that, “It takes us days rather than months to build.”
The difference in opinion is also reflected in the world of literary festivals. Derby Book Festival announced, “Despite the growing number of Festival cancellations, including Glastonbury and Chelsea Flower Show this week, we are still feeling optimistic about our Festival and our plan to hold mainly live events in late May. Things of course change very quickly and we are also having to make contingency plans for live streaming and recording events so that we can swiftly change plans if we have to.”
Hay Festival have said, “It is uncertain if live audiences will be allowed to participate in these events. If circumstances allow for limited in person attendees, we will do our best to make that happen”. Brighton Festival that also takes place in May has pushed its programme launch back from its usual date at the start of February to some point in March - and i am sure we will see everyone doing this - delaying announcements for as long as possible.
Moving out of the Square
Rdinburgh Book Festival has announed that it is moving from its traditional home of Charlotte Square to a new home at the Edinburgh College of Art. Festival Director Nick Barley said, “Covid19 has created a huge tectonic shift in the way that live events, ourselves included, can reach their audiences. With in-person ticket sales impossible to forecast this August, we simply can't justify incurring the costs of the tents and infrastructure we'd normally put into Charlotte Square Gardens. It is highly probable that most events will take place online, and the need for broadcast studios is more likely than large venues for an audience.
“In the grassy courtyard of Edinburgh College of Art we will, if rules allow, recreate the elements of the Book Festival that our audiences love – bookshops, cafes and open spaces in which to come together safely offering the ‘oasis of calm’ for which the Book Festival is renowned. The College offers excellent studio and theatre facilities for both online broadcasting and potential events with a socially distanced audience.
"We intend that this strategic partnership with the University will be a long-term arrangement.” The statement didn’t mention the problems (what The Scotsman described as ‘mounting tensions’) over the enviromental impact of the festival on its old New Town site. In February last year, it was reported that due to continual waterlogging they had still been unable to re-turf the square following the previous August’s festival. This was not popular with local residents.
Raising Our Game
My colleague Aliya Gulamani (we both work for unbound.com) wrote an important article in the Bookseller this week about the challenges faced by deaf people working in publishing and going to events. I think it is worth quoting extensively…
“Sometimes, event organisers were downright hostile in handling my requests. On one occasion, an executive director at a literary centre told me that by fulfilling my request for a British Sign Language interpreter so that I could attend an event, they had to reduce their programme to cover these costs. In other words, my disability was an inconvenience. Their words were devastating and stayed with me for a long time afterwards; the publishing industry is so tight knit, that even now, I feel a persistent anxiety that I am burning the very bridges that I want to build when I ask for what I need to be a part of the conversation…
… As we move into an increasingly virtual age, with the impact of the pandemic leading to long-term work environment changes, absolutely everything is online. And yet, the number of (closed) captioned videos are few and far between. And whilst there are notable improvements in this area, the majority of auto captions are unreliable and inaccurate. To suggest that your Deaf attendee use auto captions that you haven’t verified beforehand is lazy and irresponsible; though when the biggest bookshop in the UK doesn’t bother to caption its online author interviews, how can we normalise this practice? Whilst captioning can take time and resources, it is a small and fairly cheap task to broaden your audience base.”
You can read the full article here…
The Coast is Queer Returns
Brighton’s LGBTQ+ radical literature festival returns this month. Using a pay what you can model, the line-up includes Juno Dawson (above left) and Alan Hollinghurst amongst others. It is organised by New Writing South and Marlborough Productions (highlighting the important role that our regional writing agencies play in literary festival culture).
Further Reading…
1) Clubhouse
There is a piece in WM magazine that does a great job of explaining how Clubhouse, the hot new ‘social broadcasting’ app, works. Clubhouse, has recently received a $100m valuation. Whilst in invite-only mode, it has hosted events by a number of high profile people and it promises to be the future of online events (possibly!). Not wanting to be left out (ok lose revenue) Twitter announced that it has acquired Clubhouse rival Breaker, it will shut the app down and instead get the team to help build its own ‘audio based networking tool’ Twitter Spaces. It looks like these new tools are going to completely change the way online events and conferences are run.
2) Substack
A slightly snarky piece in the New Yorker, nevertheless, it gives a good overview of the growing importance of Substack (the brilliant platform i use to produce this newsletter).
3) The Observer’s 10 best debut novelists of 2021 (image at top of newsletter)
Great article on the best new voices to book for this year’s festivals. I am particularly looking forward to Will Burns’s The Paper Lantern (we present a monthly show together on Soho Radio called the Rough Trade Books Club).
And finally, a unique solution to social distancing at events. The Flaming Lips performed a concert to an audience who were zipped into 100 large plastic bubbles.
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