February 2020

EVENTS
that continues today.
And now? I took over as festival
director 10 years ago, with many other
family members also closely involved
in keeping the festival running.
How does the relationship work with
the venue?
One of the reasons for moving to
Claydon Estate is that they want the
festival and they understand the need
for partnership between the festival
and the venue. We have a great
open dialogue and they have been
wonderful at facilitating our unique
needs.
It has to be a partnership for an
event to work. All parties have to want
it to succeed and have a vested interest
in success.
How did you find applying for
permission to run the event?
The application process has been
smooth so far (we are currently
pending a SAG meeting). Having run
the event successfully for 56 years
without major incident and very few
resident complaints we are confident
on developing a great working
“TOWERSEY
IS MORE
THAN JUST A
FESTIVAL THAT
PARACHUTES
IN. IT BECOMES
PART OF THE
COMMUNITY
IT WORKS IN
AND OFFERS
GENUINELY
LIFE AFFIRMING
EXPERIENCES”
relationship with local residents and
the local authority.
Dialogue and discussion are
crucial as is the understanding that a
festival is a culturally important event
and not just a commercial entity.
Towersey is more than just a festival
that parachutes in. It becomes part of
the community it works in and offers
genuinely life affirming experiences.
How have you planned the layout of
the event?
With 56 years of experience behind
us we have a fairly well tested layout
although we tweak it each year. This
year, on a new site, we are trying to
keep as much of the layout the same
as possible in order to create some
continuity for customers and retain all
of the lessons we have learnt over the
years in terms of access etc.
All of our venues are covered in
either big tops or clear span structures,
with the addition of a couple of stretch
tents that we own.
How did you research and source
your marquees, flooring, bars etc?
We have a long-standing relationship
with many suppliers, but we do have
a look around every year. We work
with companies that understand
how important the event is to us. We
look for partnerships as opposed to
simply suppliers and have a string of
48 WWW.OPENAIRBUSINESS.COM