This year’s Galway Arts Festival is the largest ever featuring more than 400 writers, artists, performers, and musicians from Australia, Africa, Europe, North America and Ireland.
The festival itself may only run for two weeks a year but that doesn’t mean for the other 50 weeks nothing happens as staff are constantly busy, behind the scenes, in their offices in the Black Box, organising the event.
This week we talk to John Crumlish, the MD of the festival. John has been in charge of running the business side of the event since 2002.
“I look after the organisation and the finance of the festival. My partner in running the event is artistic director Paul Fahy. He picks the performers and I do everything else,” John says.
Four people are permanently employed by the festival each year. John, the MD; Paul Fahy, the artistic director; a financial controller; and an administrator. However this week the festival has 150 employees and approximately 150 volunteers working furiously to ensure it runs smoothly.
“The festival is a huge beast now,” John says, “This year’s budget is €2.35 million. There’ll be over 150,000 people attending.”
Originally from Co Donegal, John went to college in Galway and studied psychology before returning to the University of Ulster to complete a masters in the subject, before teaching it in an institute of technology in Derry.
But he says he never lost the Galway bug.
“I came back and I got involved with Macnas through a friend of mine, Pearse Doherty of the Saw Doctors. He was organising a parade and he needed help so I joined up. Later on I got involved with the Galway Arts Festival, then I set up a company called Macteo out of Macnas. It was basically a commercial wing of Macnas. We basically produced spectacle. We did corporate events. We did music gigs and were commissioned to put shows on by different authorities.”
His starting point with both Macnas and the festival were certainly modest. “My first role was holding a rope and the first job I ever had with the Galway Arts Festival involved minding a gate,” he says.
In 2002 John took the job as MD of the Galway Arts Festival.
“It’s been a great six years,” he explains “Very challenging but very interesting. When I came on board, having been around the festival so long, I had plenty of ideas regarding what I wanted to do.”
So how was the festival improved under his and Paul Fahy’s stewardship? John remains coy. “I think you’d have to ask other people that. I think you’d have to ask the audience.” But he adds, “But this year the Galway Arts Festival owns its own venue for the first time. The Big Top in Fisheries Field is now our own. The festival has almost doubled in size in the last six years. We’ve also started producing our own shows, which have won awards throughout the world.
“We’ve also developed the visual arts side of the audience and a serious dance programme over the past number of years.
“We are already known on the international front and now we need to build on that reputation. We have to be looking at becoming one of the best multi-format festivals in the world.”
So how far off is it now? John laughs: “I’d say we’re about €7 million off. It’s just a matter of money. We’ve increased the size of the festival. But what we need now is more sponsors, more funders, and to develop the festival we need more investment.”
