Jonathan Holloway: Festival life

By Zoe Applegate BBC Norfolk

Jonathan came to Norwich from the National Theatre

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival attracts thousands of visitors and a raft of international cutting-edge acts.

The festival has had Jonathan Holloway at its helm since 2004 and he regards being its director as the "best job in the world."

"It's a really challenging and exciting place to work - you're in the bright lights and everyone's looking at everything you do," said Jonathan.

The 2009 celebration of culture runs from Friday, 1 to Saturday, 16 May.

The festival has a first floor office just outside the cathedral walls is pulsating with a healthy dose of upbeat energy - bubbling at a level you would expect from those involved in running one of the country's top five city-based arts festivals.

At the centre of the activity is a relaxed Jonathan Holloway, with a cup of coffee in hand and keen to acknowledge the efforts of his staff in a demanding live performance environment, where everything doesn't always go quite to plan.

Although for the 39-year-old director, that seems to be part of the appeal of the job.

[I can be] "stood up launching the festival. I know that the choir boys of Kings College, Cambridge, are stuck in a 19-mile traffic jam and have been for four-and-a-half hours and simply aren't there," he said.

"You just think, 'Actually there's nothing I can do at this moment, and there are just people who can do something and they're doing it'. My job is to just keep smiling at that moment and work out what do say to the audience.

"Every single one of those [events] is the reason why this is the best job in the world."

National Theatre

Jonathan, who was born and brought up in Sheffield, had seven years of intense training for those type of heart-pounding moments while at London's hugely respected National Theatre. He set up the events department when he was just 27 and launched the venue's free Watch This Space festival.

"It's an organisation that has got very high standards and challenges and questions absolutely everything to be great," said John.

Coming under close scrutiny and having to liaise with 28 departments might not be everyone's idea of a fulfilling job, but it was a role which the Exeter University drama graduate thrived on.

Festival move

In fact, when the directorship of the 237-year-old festival came up in 2004, Jonathan didn't consider applying until his interest was sparked by a chance meeting with the festival's former head in Brighton who suggested he apply.

Although unconvinced that the job was for him, by the end of the day of his interview he'd met the board and was ready to take over the festival, which some people may be surprised to hear, given his past record, he describes as his biggest challenge to date.

"It was great to set something like that up [Watch This Space] and to be involved in a range of work and succeed and then move on to a bigger challenge - and running this festival is a much bigger challenge than that was," said John.

With a shift in scale came a change in Jonathan's approach to work, which he's steadfastly stuck to.

Audience numbers up

It's a framework which has helped to multiply audiences, with with numbers increasing from 15,000 to 70,000 in the past four years.

He said: "When I came to be interviewed for the job, I had a belief in what I thought this festival should be and I've never changed that since then.

"That's never happened to me before - that I've started with a vision which was fully formed and now all I do is play with that vision, play with ideas and how best to reach it this year.

"I started off saying quite blithely that I'd double audience, and myself and the team will have quadrupled audiences in the time I've been here..."

Festival premieres

Having the creative idea and not worrying immediately about the logistics is Jonathan's preferred way of working.

Philip Glass is playing exclusively in Norwich for the festival

It's how he's been able to lure international artists to come to Norwich, rather than London, as happened this year with Philip Glass, who will be flying in for one night only to perform his solo show at Norwich Theatre Royal.

"Laurie Anderson performed here in 2008 and happened to mention what a great experience she'd had seeing Philip Glass," said Jonathan.

With funding doubling in 2008, the Norfolk & Norwich Festival has been able to successfully court the attention of more internationally-renowned acts.

These include multi Grammy Award winner soprano, Dawn Upshaw, French pyrotechnicians Les Commandos Percu with their choreographed show, Bombs Per Minute, the song and chanson icon, Ute Lemper and the legendary jazz trumpeter from Poland, Tomasz Stanko.

Family time

The months of planning that go into the 16-day event and then the onslaught of work which comes around the festival launch means time there's little room left to enjoy family life with his half-Swedish, half-Spanish partner, Jenny, and their two young daughters aged three and one.

His partner also works as a producer at the festival, and during its run, both sets of grandparents share the childcare.

With the pair working solidly, they're both looking forward to taking an extended break in Jenny's native Majorca after the event wraps up for another year.

While some festival organisers' work might be over after the stint, the Norfolk & Norwich Festival is at the centre of a number of other schemes, keeping Jonathan's busy for 12 months of the year.

Ask if his role really is a year-round post and it seems a question which Jonathan is used to encountering.

He joked: "One of my colleagues who used to run the Edinburgh Fringe Festival said he's going to call his autobiography And What Do You Do For The Rest Of The Year?"

While Jonathan might be yearning for a relaxing time after the inevitable dramas that go hand-in-hand with being in charge of a festival, it seems that things are about to get busier than ever.

New projects have been launched and staff numbers have risen from four when Jonathan arrived to 20 by the end of 2008.

"We deliver creative partnerships, which we've been doing in Great Yarmouth, where we are now working with 45 schools - that's 13,000 children - across the whole of Norfolk in 2010," he said.

Vik Ellis prepares her work for the Norfolk Open Studios season

"We also run Norfolk Open Studios, which is a big project that runs straight after the festival and in 2009 we will be delivering Contemporary Art Norwich, working with other venues and visual arts promoters as well as programming our own events," he added.

The driving force of all of these schemes though remains the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, with each run requiring innovative ideas, negotiations with international artists and finally an audience to enjoy the string of events.

Ever-changing role

For Jonathan it's an ever-changing role that leaves little room for him to get bored - and with another festival nearly secure under his belt, he's not about to get complacent.

"Of course, you don't know until you launch it whether it's going to work," he said.

"In 2008 we increased our targets by about 40% but there was always the risk that we were going to fail and lose a lot of money.

"I have a tendency to start every year as though it's my first and I also programme every festival as though it's my last."