Anna Moreau chats with Brendan Coleman, Festival director of the Fremantle Street Art Festival.
WABN: Describe a day at work.
BC: “I work on the festival over a 12-month period; obviously sometimes it’s very intense and other times it’s just about scouting and planning. It’s a cycle. Right now, with the festival coming up on the Easter weekend, it’s the busy time.
“I think I have to be a bit abstract –stretch, sweat, type, write, run fun, it’s usually something of everything.
WABN: What is the best piece of advice you can give someone to motivate a team?
BC: “I think you need to lead by example; you give that team the energy, and you have to be consistent with what you are doing.”
WABN: What was the most challenging event in your career?
BC: “In event management you can plan everything to the nth degree. The real challenge is when something goes wrong, if the artist get sick, if something in the chain breaks down, you have a very short period of time to solve the problem.
In the heat of the moment this is the greatest challenge, a multitude of things can happen. You can plan but some things are out of your hands, so you have to be adaptive.
One of the other things that you have to be able to do that comes with the job is that you work when everyone else plays; you have to be able to manage that in your personal life. You miss out on family events, on a personal level I find that very challenging but again, that’s what you do and it comes with it.”
WABN: What is the main quality are you looking for within your team members?
BC: “The most important quality is to keep composure under pressure, that ability to be calm and have very good communication skills. You have to be able to get the job done even if things are against you; it’s a very important quality to have. That’s not for everybody, which is why we look very carefully at someone’s ability to cope with a certain amount of work.”
WABN: How do you deal with egos in your workplace?
BC: “I don’t have a problem with egos, it sort of comes with the territory. When you’re managing events there is nothing wrong with self esteem. We like to encourage egos actually, I guess what I do is more in the preventative.
“When I form a cast and production team, I find out how people are to work with, not only if they are good at what they do.
“I find that’s it’s really worth the time to find out how the interpersonal relationships work. I don’t put a cast in a position when I know there are existing tensions because it’s simply not worth it.
“You may have the 10 best acts in the world but your festival won’t work if they don’t like each other, because it’s actually what goes on behind the scenes that determines what goes on at the front.”
WABN: Is there an organisation/business model that you strive to achieve/reach?
BC: “The World Buskers Festival in Christchurch is a 10-day event with 400 performances. I do benchmark a little bit off that festival and keep an eye on what they are doing as it is similar event, but we do things differently in the same genre.
“I actually like to think that I have my own vision about how I want this to be. I guess you look for inspiration from everything around you that you admire.”
WABN: What are the specific hurdles that you meet on a daily basis in your sector? How do you deal with them?
BC: “It’s about trying to get the things that you want done on very little money. I try to always squeeze more juice out of that lemon, with constantly working out ways to get things done on limited resources, which means working with people and having good relationships with your stakeholders. I see that as a big part of my job. That’s why relationships are very important, because you’re very dependent on all of your stakeholders to get things done. It’s very important that you feel that they’re with you in what you’re trying to achieve.”
WABN: What's best measurement of your performance, and can you name a highlight in your career?
BC: “When I came on board I like to think that my greatest achievement was that the festival already had a great momentum, but at that point a lot of relationships with stakeholders needed some work.
“During the past five years, the quality of the acts coming through has increased a lot, and radiated through the rest of everything we’ve done.
“We’ve worked very hard on the publicity and promotion of the festival, and from my end I’ve made sure that, when we have people coming down here, they are not disappointed. It’s been really satisfying over the past couple years to see people bringing chairs and planning to come to the event rather than probably in the first five years the festival was working because it’s an Easter holiday and Fremantle is a lovely place to come and there happens to be a festival.
“It’s very satisfying to see that we’re reaching new audiences.”
