Special Feature: Norfolk And Norwich Festival, Pictures, Interviews

Norfolk & Norwich Festival is the international arts festival for the East of England, programming world class music, theatre, dance, circus, visual arts and children's events for 16 days each May. It has rapidly become one of the fastest growing and most vibrant multi-arts festivals in Europe. Visitors from all over the country and beyond are ensuring that Norwich is a cultural hot spot every year in May.

We talk to artistic director Jonathan Holloway...

How do you go about devising a programme for something as huge and eclectic as this festival?
 
It is a combination of vision, tenacity and pragmatism.  I start with a few ideas and a couple of questions.  These tend to come from my sense of the people I'm programming for and the artists with whom I want to collaborate.  I then travel a lot, building my sense of what makes Norwich special and what are the world issues we should be exploring.  I talk to people: artists, producers, journalists and audiences. From those conversations stories begin to emerge and I start to make decisions about what events and artists would best tell those stories.  With this in mind, I then try and put together the most exciting and rich festival possible.
 
What exactly are you looking for in potential acts?
 
Skill and wit, fresh dynamism grounded in talent - an act or artist with a "voice" and something to say.  I travel to festivals around the world looking for those artists that I want to take home to meet the family.  There is a moment in many performances at my Festival when the energy changes, and an "entertain me" audience becomes a "wow" audience - that is when I know that I've got that one right.
 
How long does it take to put together something like this?
 
I'm currently discussing large-scale projects for 2013, orchestral music for 2011 and 2012, and talking with artists about 2011.  I will work full-time on the May 2011 programme from September to December this year, but a lot of what I will select is already in discussion.  I have a reputation for programming very late, but I think the programme is richer for it. 
 
What are you most looking forward to seeing - or don't you get chance to see much?
 
I get to see about twenty minutes of absolutely everything in the Festival, so I always have a sense of what worked and what didn't. Sadly I rarely get to sit through a whole thing.  This year, however, I will make sure I don't miss a minute of Jordi Savall's Jerusalem, John Cale or La Vie. 
 
How did you come to be involved in the festival itself?
 
Before Norwich I was head of the events department at the National Theatre, producing festivals on London's South Bank, and I got to travel to many festivals worldwide.  My moment of epiphany came in 2003 at the New Zealand Festival run by Carla Van Zon. I was further from home than I had ever been, and yet the sense of a festival changing a place was so strong, the welcome was so warm and the experience so transforming that I knew I wanted to explore how powerful festivals can be in a place which is not at the centre of the world.  Six months later I left the centre of London for the East of England.