It's no secret that the nature of festivals and events are changing, with large touring setups being eschewed for smaller, more sustainable boutique gatherings.
Few people know this better than festival manager and promoter Adrian Buckley, who will be sharing his knowledge with audiences at Australian Music Week in November (AMW).
As head of his own management company (Adrian Buckley Management), he says his focus at AMW will be improving the visibility and status of small to medium-sized festivals. “What I do is bring an insight into what it's like for small to medium-sized festivals and I think that's a really important thing,” Adrian says.
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“I think there is an issue in this country in terms of events and booking events; programming them and dealing with booking agents where there's a massive gulf between what a small to medium-sized event can afford to pay.
“A lot of the time prices are put in front of you that aren't necessarily reflective of the size and scale of your event. It's very difficult to get across to people that perhaps in the industry we all need to be supporting each other, and what that means is sometimes artists perhaps need to be encouraged to play small to medium-sized events to support the industry.”
With extensive experience in management, entertainment, media and even hospitality, Adrian has developed an excellent reputation, his major successes being Wollombi Music Festival and reviving Narara Music Festival.
At AMW, Adrian will be throwing a spotlight on some of the hard truths and realities of event management in terms of keeping them sustainable and reaping the financial rewards for all the hard work that goes into organising and promoting a festival.
“The thing facing a lot of people in the events industry is that there seems to be some events that are incredibly successful, and that's fantastic,” he says, “and there's a lot of other events that struggle to be successful or be financially stable and I think there's a difference between being financially stable and financially successful.”
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This will be Adrian's second time at AMW and says that while he is at the conference to speak, he will also be taking the opportunity to engage with his industry colleagues to try and improve his own skill-sets. “Insights into growing your event and being a promoter,” Adrian says is what he hopes to take away this year.
“What I'm looking to do is grow and scale our events. For me it's a really important thing to grow at a scale that is viable and worthy. So to have the opportunity to sit and talk with other people in the industry about what they're doing to achieve those things is really good.
“I really enjoy the creative process of putting an event together; it's a very stressful industry, make no mistakes about that, but I really enjoy the process of building events. For me it's a holistic, artistic endeavour putting a festival together.”
