Holloway making connections

JONATHAN Holloway understands what it is like to push a remote city’s pre-eminent festival to the next level, and then stretch it some more.

At the beginning of the year, Mr Holloway took over from Sheila Magadza as artistic director of the Perth International Arts Festival, and moved straight into programming what will be the 60-year celebrations of PIAF in 2012.

He came from his post as artistic director of the oldest festival (238 years) in the UK, The Norfolk & Norwich Festival.

“The similarities between that and here are tremendous. I am basically the old and remote festival guy,” Mr Holloway says.

In his six years in the job at Norwich he boosted that festival’s audience numbers 10-fold and took the turnover from £400,000 to just under £3 million.

“It went from being one of the 20 lovely festivals in the UK to being the fourth biggest city arts festival,” Mr Holloway told WA Business News.

He has equally big plans for PIAF.

“I have this belief that the greatest cities in the world are partly defined by their festivals, and great cities have great festivals,” he says.

“Edinburgh, Avignon, London, you have extraordinary festivals in New York, Barcelona, and so on and Perth is one of those. But in the next four years I really want to push it into exploring what is the essence of the 21st century festival.

“It is about engagement across a number of platforms. Yes, it is about people gathering together in a large dark room to watch people on a stage ... but that is what the festival has always been about.

“The difference with the 21st century festival is [that] it is about digital engagement, consumption and communication of the arts. It is about people owning the festival rather than it being done to them. 

“The model of the festival that gets ‘done’ to you once a year is probably coming near to an end. People want active participation and engagement.”

The word ‘vision’ can be vague in its application at times, but Mr Holloway’s is a considered and direct approach.

The target is set on increasing corporate funding for the festival and growing the calibre of not only its performances, but the educational and community based programs.

Six months into the role and there is already traction in the plan; Rio Tinto has re-committed as a major partner of the festival and doubled its contribution, which will be more than $1 million over the next four years.

Change is planned for some of the festival’s most loved and best-known elements, too, with the naming rights to Beck’s Music Box up for grabs thanks to the beer brand bowing out after several years.

“We work with partners, corporate organisations, funders, artists, to fundamentally change the way people perceive Western Australia through the festival. That is the big picture,” Mr Holloway says.

“There is a transformational nature a festival can have, economically, socially, culturally, and can affect the entire life of a city.”

It is clear Mr Holloway isn’t afraid of taking on a challenge; in fact it is partially what attracted him to the role.

Outside of that, though, the thrill of directing a festival that is so well loved, and in which the audience and community are so involved, also played a part in his decision to come to WA.

“There is something about the fact that festivals in places like Perth, if they didn’t exist you would have to invent them,” Mr Holloway says. “Whereas, I worked at the National Theatre in London before I worked in Norwich and I was always sort of aware that if the festival I ran stopped, people would be really sad for a very short period of time and then they would move on.

“Places like Norwich and Perth really need that festival, which can transform the way they see their city year-round.”

Mr Holloway describes the annual cycle of festival organisation as a constant ramp-up to high intensity, and says it takes a special sort of person to stay in the game for their entire career.

“Festivals are kind of like an extreme sport for arts professionals, because they start very slowly in the beginning of the year and then get faster and faster until it is completely insane,” he says.

“It is something people do for often a period of time in their lives, it suits a certain type of person.”

Thanks to his father’s role as a classical music journalist, Mr Holloway says musicians were always a part of his childhood, which helped fuel his interest in the arts.

He closely followed his dad’s career, attending concerts at the Sheffield City Hall.

“When I got to about 11 or 12 I would go with my dad to the news room; he would type on an old typewriter while smoking and drinking wine, as everyone else was,” Mr Holloway remembers.

“He would type up the review and then hand it to somebody who would physically set it up with blocks on the presses. I loved the fact of the art and that there was craft around the art, and the show didn’t end when people walked off stage. From then on I was hooked.”

Following that were days as a cathedral chorister, a time in youth theatre, drama studies and his first role as theatre director.

“I have talked to people who tell me that, at a very young age, I said I was going to direct things,” Mr Holloway says. “It was about the effect you can have. I think creativity is connecting the unconnected.”

That belief will come in handy when it comes to a city built on the dream of owning a home on a quarter-acre block.

“I am knocked out by how road-dominated Perth is. It is a very suburban city and as a result it is quite divided. I think that is interesting, I would love to explore that.”