Annette Tripodi
In this episode Chelsea catches up with Associate Director of WOMADelaide, Annette Tripodi, to chat about sustainability, programming, festival delivery during the pandemic and much more.
Produced by Chelsea Wilson
Transcript by Natalie Burne
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
festival, artists, people, adelaide, programming, event, venue, park, botanic, program, stage, music, feel, australia, happen, australian, years, publicity, work, create
TRANSCRIPT
Chelsea
Annette, welcome to the control podcast.
Annette
Thank you so much. It's really good to be here and congrats on the podcast as well.
Chelsea
Thank you, and congrats to you on delivering another WOMADelaide How are you feeling in this post festival moment?
Annette
The usual kind of stunned, relieved, tired, happy. It's a very peculiar feeling. You know, when you work on something that so many people know, you work on something for a long, long time. And then it's kind of all over within four days, particularly this edition, which was our 30th anniversary edition.
Chelsea
Incredible.
Annette
And all the fraught lead up to any major event in Australia in the last couple of years. The fact that it was just on was like a massive, massive relief. And when Friday night of the festival was actually underway, you know, it was like, Oh, my god, is this real? And when it finished, it just felt like a an absolute dream. In fact, it went, it went so well, it was beyond our wildest dreams. You know, we had really good crowds, great performances, beautiful weather, and everything just ran so smoothly. And you know, we couldn't have asked for a better event. But it does mean that because of how difficult the lead up was, I think this year, I and all of my colleagues were like, deeply exhausted more than usual. In a way that was just like, the peculiar stresses of the last year or two had had its effect more than we realized. And so when it was finished, you know, we were just like, wow, and then everyone just went crash.
Chelsea
Festival life, it is a really different way of working I think compared to other kind of artistic practices where you spend time making something, you know, you're in the studio making an album and there's a physical thing at the end. Or you're making a visual art piece, when you’re sort of making a festival. I often think about the Sand mandalas that the Tibetan monks make, you know, you've spent this entire year or longer because sometimes with programming, you have to program some of these acts 3,4,5 years in advance whatever that looks like. And you've intricately built this lineup and all these moving pieces and people from all around the world coming for this one event, and then, it’s over.
Annette
And you sweep it away into the back of your brain.
Chelsea
And it’s done. Do you have any post festival rituals? Is that something that you do? After every WOMADelaide? Do you celebrate the wins? Or are you just straightaway planning the next one?
Annette
There are certain things that we do. I mean, obviously, there are things that have to happen that are kind of boring, but very important admin, such as paying people
Chelsea
paying everyone
Annette
submitting our APRA song list. And, you know, just all that kind of, I call it administrivia, which is very important, but you know, it's the last thing you feel like doing. And then that happens. It's kind of ongoing even to now a few weeks later. But it's obviously very important in the week, the days following the festival. I always take a day off as quickly as possible so that I can just not be at work I love to do to be very physical, even though I've just run around botanic Park and probably stocked up. No kidding. Somewhere in there. 60 to 100 kilometers of walking, your body's tired, but it actually feels good to go for a bike ride or go for a swim, have a massage, that's always number one on my list, eat really good food. And then for our office, we kind of lock in a festival debrief and a wrap lunch as quickly as we can post festival so that everything's fresh. And we can talk about the highs and the lows, the things that worked the things that perhaps didn't. Note it down for the future and work on you know, work towards changing those things if we need to. And also celebrating so we had a beautiful lunch at an Italian restaurant where we were the only clientele.
Chelsea
perfect
Annette
30 to 40 of us and you know, it's one of those days that starts at midday and it may end up finishing at six or it may end up finishing at two o'clock in the morning but that is a really joyous thing because we don't see each other like the key festival team. We don't really hang out and have fun at the festival in the way that maybe people would imagine. I am definitely out and about seeing as much as I can of the performances, but obviously production and technical and site teams, you know, they really, they're at the crunchy end of their work, making sure things are actually running. And then the worst thing that they have to do, which is not part of my role is the bump out, like pack up.
Chelsea
Yes
Annette
Pack up the park. It's like cleaning up after a party who wants to do that when you're so exhausted. But it's an essential part of post festival, you know, period. But we are absolutely thrilled that we could return to botanic Park celebrate 30 years and have seven stages and really, really amazing lineup that was 95% Australian for the first time ever, I feel good.
Chelsea
Yeah, that's great and huge congratulations. What an amazing milestone and contribution to the Australian arts and music landscape. Can you tell us a little bit about your approach to programming the festival? How do you put together the lineup? Do you think about balancing genres? Are you booking headline acts first, how do you kind of shape the narrative of music across those seven stages?
Annette
It's a good question. And it's not exactly the same every year, for example. Now, it's only a few weeks after the 2022 Festival, and I have already made half a dozen invitations, proper invitations for 2023. And as you mentioned earlier, you know, there are artists that you have been talking to, for some time working towards bringing to Australia, in the case of the here and now you know, we've got a massive backlog, if I could use that word of like really amazing artists that we've not been able to bring this year or last year. And so there are some that, you know, I feel very confident an invitation will be made, they've got the dates on hold already, because we've deferred them a few times. But normally, I suppose what we're looking for in any program is the best possible highest quality, balanced mix of music from all around the world, be it contemporary or traditional. And we want it to be a lineup that is different from other festivals in Australia, we want to be completely different lineup every year. So you know, whoever we've had 12 months ago will not be on the bill for next year. You know, if we do them again, there'll be a bit of a pause. So I've got this amazing wish list, which are people that I've seen live or people that I love on, you know, love their albums, who I just feel would be amazing at the festival. And they might not be a known artist, they could be, you know, a typically unknown to Australian audiences artist, that WOMAD will be the person that the organization presenting for the very first time, in lots of ways we love to do a an Australian debut. That's not always possible. If we can do a WOMADelaide debut, that's great. If we can do an exclusive, that's wonderful. But you know, the money doesn't always make sense in doing that. A lot of people ask if I kind of tick a box with countries. And that's not the case. But it's fair to say that, you know, I wouldn't have a program that's got 15 groups from Africa. And you know, nothing from Europe, you know, just, it wouldn't make sense. We want to deliver a really broad range of sounds from as many different cultures as we can. And as I'm sure you know, as someone who programs, things, who you want is not necessarily who you'll end up with. So it's very, it's very organic, it's a very musical feast, and it may be that the person we want is not available, or they're just really out of financial range. So the wish list is very big and very, you know, it moves a lot from year to year. And then we work with a lot of great promoters in Australia who regularly tour fantastic artists. And so we might invite somebody that they're touring nationally to just do their Adelaide show at WOMADelaide. And a lot of the time those artists, we're not going to do Adelaide. And so you know, it's really great if we can add to somebody's national tour by having a show in South Australia that wouldn't otherwise have happened. We do have a kind of expressions of interest platform through our website that's open from roughly May to July, which I do listen to and check through and read in detail. And that can be a wonderful way of learning about somebody that you've never heard of that is actually a perfect fit. Probably that applies more to Australian artists than internationals. So they're in a in a normal life, I will be going out to a lot of live music as well. And finding things that way through other festivals through even big sound, you know, music conference festival type events, where you have the opportunity to see a lot of stuff in a short space of time. Obviously, I've been working on the festival one way or another for a long time since late 1997. So I've got a really good gut feeling, and sense of what will work really well for the festival. And sometimes it's not necessarily something I personally love. But it's something that fits fits really well in the mix. And I know that the audience will really embrace. So yeah, it's a beautiful musical jigsaw puzzle. And the pieces have slowly will slowly come together between now and probably early October.
Chelsea
How has the pandemic shaped your practice as a programmer?
Annette
Well, for one thing, I've had to kind of create parallel festival programs. So by that, I mean, because there's been so much uncertainty about whether a festival can actually proceed, and if it can, to what capacity and in what sort of format, you know, that's led us to work with different scenarios that may pan out. And so instead of just programming, I'll say just programming, a normal festival with you know, 45 internationals and 25 Aussies and street theatre and planet talks and all those things across seven stages. Suddenly, we're saying, well, there's that version. But then there's a version, which is what if we can only do all Australians. And so there's a kind of parallel secondary program that you might have to put into play. In 2021, we did not get permission from SA health to do our full festival in botanic Park in any format. And so what we did was within probably, less than a month, kind of reinvent the event into a series of four nights, the same dates, but in a different venue where we could put 6000 seats. and we had eleven Australian bands. That was it, over the four nights doing, you know, a kind of concert series. That was a massive change, and obviously, a horrible exercise to have to go through when I had a program ready to roll and all these people confirmed but not yet announced. And then I had to go back to all of these artists and, you know, a very familiar story in Australia in the last couple of years and say, I'm really sorry but we were not able to go ahead in that format. And so we we held on to the artists who were, I guess, although only you know, a sixth of the size of a normal festival in terms of the number of artists. They were a great representation of like a mini WOMAD we had headliners in Midnight Oil doing a standard kind of classics show. But then they did their Makarrata life project with like 25 First Nations guest singers, which is obviously perfect for us. We had Miiesha as like a young up and coming First Nations singer playing with Kaiit and Tash Sultana. So it was like a triple bill of young, incredibly talented women who would all be totally, you know, the right fit for a fuller festival. We had Archie Roach, who was kind of the farewelling Adelaide, and he'd been at the festival four times we love him to pieces. And on that same night, we had Lior with the Adelaide symphony orchestra. And Sara Glasgow, and it was all of the nights were beautiful, but we you know, we lamented the loss of our festival in botanic Park, like, like anybody would, it's so much work that just kind of went down the drain. So many artists that aren't you know, we're disappointed by being cancelled effectively. And so we did learn from that, that we've got to be prepared for a Plan B and Plan C, maybe even more. SA health were very supportive early on about us returning to botanic park, but they made it really clear that it wouldn't be at the full capacity of 25,000 and that we would have to probably make some major modifications to our site to create more space and follow all kinds of rules
Chelsea
It just already feel so spacious. It’s such a beautiful site. That's what I love about coming over for WOMAD, it feels relaxed, you know, I don't enjoy squashy crowds
Annette
No, there's plenty of room 34 hectares. And I think there's some kind of magic in the air at botanic park when people enter the venue, and if they've even if they've never been before, they just kind of relax and take a sigh. And suddenly, it's just, you know, smiles all around. But for the 2022 festival, you know, we were thinking we wouldn't be able to have any internationals, and we made very few invitations, late last year, to about half a dozen groups. And we were, you know, hedging our bets thinking it's quite possible that they might not be able to come. And so we had some backups in place for that. And then in January, because, of course, the scenario of lead singer of a major band getting COVID, at the time of the festival, and not being able to perform was a possible reality. I had another, probably 10 groups on standby for six weeks, at least before the festival, who were just we had all their photos and tech specs and music and everything ready to go, in case we need to quickly slot them in. And then I'd also spoken to some amazing others who were already in the festival, but only doing one performance to say, if we need to upgrade you to two shows, you know, are you available? can you do that? So it's kind of like the pandemic has meant backups for your backups for your backups.
Chelsea
which is a completely different way of working, everything's taking three, four or five times longer.
Annette
Exactly. And that applied not only to the others, but to our staff, to our crew to our stage MCs, everybody. So it's kind of doing you know, more than twice the work. Really what you don't need, which is why we're all extra tired after this one.
Chelsea
Yeah, the anxiety and uncertainty about how it's going to land, putting together that concert program for 6000 seated people, you know, is is such a triumph and incredible that it was able to go ahead, but it's a completely different event to be programming. You know, a festival like WOMADelaide and people wander, that's part of the beautiful discovery of being able to move from stage to stage is very different from buying a static ticket to sit in the one place and experience as a show in entirety rather than that sort of smorgasbord feel of a festival. So it's completely, completely different. So yeah, huge hats off to you and the team for, you know, managing to I mean, pivot’s that key word that everyone's been using the last couple of years, we've all had to come up with other kind of alternative models for what we do. But it's just great that the festival managed to go ahead and still support artists. And speaking of local artists, and going through that EOI list, which I'm sure is huge. I've got a lot of musicians that do listen to this podcast, which is why I wanted to ask you this question. How do you know when an artist is ready for a festival?
Annette
Well, it's not always easy. A lot of it is a gut instinct thing, that that definitely comes from experience. I would say that when people are doing an EOI if they've never really performed at all, you know that they're probably going to be very low down on the list. And so we ask questions in the in the EOI about, you know who you are, where you're from, the loose genre, we give them the opportunity to provide a blurb and any links to music, videos, websites, etc. And then we ask, you know, have you performed here before? Have you done major festivals before? All kinds of questions that give me a good insight into what I guess what sort of level an artist might be at. And that's not to say that a new-ish artist can't perform at the festival. That's definitely not the case. But if the support material is really poor, you know, it's not going to make a very good impression on any programmer. And so I would always say to any artist, that your main aim should be to be as good as you can possibly be in your performances, live and in your recordings. And don't put up things online that are inferior, you know, like, if you've had something build properly, even if it is a low key event It's going to be a much better impression than somebody sending me phone footage that has awful sound. And you know, it just doesn't reflect well on the artist. I think what we really want is quality. And obviously, when you've had a lot of performance experience, you're, you're hopefully going to be a great quality performer. But there are young emerging artists who just have you know, it. They have that talent, and I can usually see where something might be quite raw, but it's excellent as well. So that's a really tricky question to answer. One thing I'll mention in that context actually is in having this last program of 95% Aussies, the quality was amazing. Across the board, the the performances were outstanding. And some of the performances came through our relatively new WOMADelaide NSS Academy, we've been working with Northern sound system in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. They in turn, selected about a dozen emerging young First Nations and multicultural artists to undergo music and development training really. So learning how to do press releases and publicity, refining live shows, songwriting intensives workshops for stage performance, you know, all of the things that kind of contribute to an artist being able to perform, you know, and create and release music. It's really fantastic. And then they did a showcase evening, where I got to see them all perform live for two or three songs. And from that, we selected three artists, Sokel, LC Romeo, who was really on the rise independently of the academy, and also sons of serpent. So all I like based artists, and with Sokel, for example, I don't think he'd mind me saying this publicly, you know, that the show was just so mad and crazy, good and dynamic. It just needed some tweaks and a little bit of work to make it even better. And he was open to having that discussion with me. And then when he performed at WOMADelaide, it was, it was honestly next level, they'd been rehearsing, and they had taken some advice from the Academy team, and from me to just, like, reshape things a little bit, and make sure that, they only had a 45 minute show that it was just all to all goodness, you know, like all, all killer, no filler. Yeah. But he's super new, and really young. And, you know, so that, that kind of thing. You can recognize where there's that spark that is going to be, it's going to work, you know, and then you can see where somebody really needs more time to develop their confidence or what they do.
Chelsea
It's a really exciting and wonderful part of being a programmer also, I think, is being able to have that relationship with emerging artists and be part of the development and I think it's part of the role that a lot of people maybe don't really understand or know about, but that kind of relationship building and giving that sort of feedback is so important. Just changing track a little bit. I wanted to talk about how WOMAD connects with Adelaide and WOMAD. The festivals are a brand that's in the UK around the world, Chile, New Zealand. But what is that connection with Adelaide between the festival and the town and what do you think the difference would be if you lifted the festival up and moved it somewhere else? What is it about Adelaide specifically that makes it work?
Annette
Well we do have the benefit of being a very laid back accessible city. You know, we're we're a small CBD, you can get to the beach to the hills to the airport, 20 minutes.
Chelsea
I love that.
Annette
It is it is a massive asset. So to be able to have a venue like botanic Park, which is a heritage listed botanical garden, you know, to have that in the middle of the city and as our venue that people can so easily come and go from whether they're flying in or whether they are resident in Adelaide is a massive bonus for us. You know it's I think our venue is quite crucial to the ambient, physical mental heart experience that people have at the festival and So, if we were to move to Melbourne or Sydney, for example, which, which was definitely a hot thing about a decade or more ago, where people would approach us and say, How about it? Like, do you want to relocate the event, I think we've really found our, our forever home and our footing here now. But we would definitely want to have a similarly Central, beautiful, special venue in which to build the festival. And that's not as easy in other places. And in the way that the festival was born. WOMADelaide was born out of the Adelaide Festival. And so when it began 30 years ago, in 1992, it was intended to be a one off festival within Adelaide Festival. And what that meant for the birth of the festival is that it was coming from a place of, it's not a rock and roll, just wax and bands on stages, it was coming from the sort of aesthetic and production, high production values of a theatrical event, which has really played into how the programming has remained quite different from other festivals around Australia. So it's very important to us that the crew, the staff, the venue, the artists, and everything, is, I guess, keeping up with that ethos of being an international level event in the middle of a city that is open to all ages, you know, children to grandparents. And through our programming, we constantly connect with Adelaide based major cultural institutions. With the SA museum Nexus arts this year, for the first time, the academy program that I mentioned earlier, all of the KidZone are all Adelaide based creators and artists. In the past, we've worked with Carlew youth arts and with the art gallery. And it's very easy to create those relationships in a city like Adelaide, where people are very accessible to have those conversations, and I think it is something that will take a lot more time to do in say Sydney, where establishing those connections and networks might be a little more difficult because people have their own interests at heart, not wanting to work together. That's a really interesting question. And having worked on or attended a lot of the other WOMAD festivals, they all have a connection to place through the programming, but also through their venues.
Chelsea
Adelaide in March is a really exciting time with the Arts Festival, Fringe Festival, WOMAD, and it just seems like an endless myriad of events all happening across the city simultaneously. It's really exciting as a punter. But how do you think that model works from your perspective in ensuring that WOMADelaide doesn't get lost in the noise?
Annette
In fact, it's been a really great thing that all the festivals, Adelaide Fringe, Adelaide Festival and WOMAD. We're all biannual until certain times and when everything since everything's been annual, we it's really complimentary. I mean, it means that from a tourism point of view, anyone, anyone who's visiting the city can actually go to all three events, and see a pretty vastly different array of programming and shows in a relatively short space of time. You know, we're still kind of a part of Adelaide Festival in a way although we operate completely independently, they promote us through their festival program. And sometimes we have conversations about artists that we can't present for some reason that might work better for them, or vice versa. Adelaide fringe is not a curated event. So you know, being an open access event, there'll be all kinds of things on across their program, from cabaret and circus to comedy and music and whatever but I think the term mad March which I absolutely despise, we really don't like that term. It is a really wonderful time, February March to be in this city. And I think it is a favorable thing that we went annual in 2003 I think the fringe in 2007 And I think Adelaide Festival in 2012 and it makes it a hell of a lot easier for all of us to program because I don't know if you've ever thought about this. But when we were biannual we'd finish, we'd wrap up. And then it would be really long, two years and until the next event. And so there are kind of missed opportunities, when there's such a big gap in between where an artist might be just, you know, so hot, and they're just perfect for you. But you miss the moment because you're too far away. And so the cycle of programming and planning has become a lot easier for all of the events, I think, in being annual. And there's an organization here called festival satellite, which is essentially a gathering of all the festivals that happen in SA, we work together to lobby and work with government and council to try and get things in place that benefit all of the festivals. So it's pretty harmonious.
Chelsea
That's brilliant. It's a really good example of community.
Annette
Yeah, it is very, like I said earlier, it's very easy to connect with community here. And I think that does apply with the sort of partnerships that go on between all the festivals.
Chelsea
I'd love to hear your thoughts about sustainability and the music industry I know green music Australia has been quite vocal and doing some great work in the space. And there's a lot of festivals around the country that are looking at different models of how to be more environmentally conscious. Given the location of WOMAD in botanic Park, it feels like you're quite already environmentally minded, but what role does the festival play in looking after the surrounds and taking that into consideration?
Annette
Well, I'll start by saying that it was 2001 that we really began our sustainability programs. And at that point, you know, we got rid of all plastic serving materials in in the park at all the stalls and also backstage, we have compostable everything. And at the end of the festival, once that was all sorted, like the compost went back into Botanic Gardens, you know, it was a very, very good starting point, some 20 years ago. And over the years, we've refined and added and tested and trialed a whole bunch of things, biodiesel for generators, all the different sorts of cup systems where nothing is disposable. And the park itself, you know, we have a really extensive contract with them. That is very, very detailed in terms of the use of the park and the things that we're allowed to do and not allowed to do, we do a kind of, it's like a house inspection. There's a pre event inspection with all of the garden relevant stuff. And there's also a post event inspection. And so whether it's damaged in any way, and it is, if there is any, it's always accidental, it could be somebody who's delivering some staging, who backs into a tree, we have to do the reparations for that we have a responsibility to give the park back in as close to the condition that we received it in as possible. And you know, some of the trees on site that they each have every tree in botanic Park has a value and monetary value, which is based on how old it is, how big it is. Where the seeds came from, it could be native to botanic Park, it could be a tiny tree, but a very precious tree could be really big tree, but not so precious. So all these things about turf care, and trenching and things that are nuts and bolts stuff for the park. But for the festival itself, we're always working to be as environmentally responsible as possible. And it's it takes a lot of work. Like we have somebody who is our sustainability officer who works part time, but he's very dedicated to all of those sorts of things. How can we power things better? How can we reduce the waste, but essentially, it's been an ongoing thing for more than 20 years for us. And a key thing is a partnership that we've had with Greening Australia for a long time, where a portion of each ticket that's sold goes to them. And we have created a number of WOMAdelaide forests on Kangaroo Island, and there's a new one now on the Florida peninsula, which are providing, essentially, you know, reforesting terrible bits of land, to bring them back to a more natural state. It's intense, it can always be better, but we're always looking to work towards that.
Chelsea
I'd love to go back a little bit in your career. I know you worked for Penguin Books in the UK and for PR firm Marcus Warren, what was this time in your life like?
Annette
Wow, feels like a really long time ago, I feel very old at this point. I did a Bachelor of Arts in communications. And I finished that in the late 80s. And yes, I worked in public relations and publicity for corporate companies really, for the first few years of my working life, which was nothing like what I would ever like to be doing now tell you, it was in Adelaide and Sydney, and at a time in the late 1980s, where waste and expense was just rife, you know, I just look back on that and think my God, it was just so such a crazy time to be living in Sydney and in the world at that time, and so when I left Sydney, and I moved to London for three years, I was just doing temp jobs. And I found myself working for Reuters, that international news agency, and Penguin Books and things that were kind of up my alley, even though the work itself was quite menial, you know, I always just been paid by the hour to be like an executive assistant type thing. And I'd save up a heap of money. And then I just go and travel somewhere and come back. I just did that over and over for three years. But I did find that I was really leaning towards writing, I had wanted an alternative career within journalism. And so I was kind of working in companies as a temp where what they did really interested me. And living in London gives you such access to amazing music and art and Europe as well. And so I found myself going to festivals a lot. And when I came back to Adelaide, I had this vision, call it what you will, I will work for Adelaide fringe, that's what I want to do. And I work in publicity. And a job came up, I went for the interview, I got it, it was a short contract like most Arts jobs. And I loved it so much. I loved it. I worked really, really hard pre mobile phones pre email, I adored it. And I thought this is it, change of life. And I stayed in the media and publicity and marketing area in festivals and the arts. Until 97. When I worked on the festival that was called Come out. It's now called Dream Big as a program manager, and I kind of learned that that was working with the artistic director to create the program. And then it was another lightbulb moment of I don't want to do media anymore I want to make the festival and when I started here, at WOMADelaide with arts projects in Australia, which is the parent company, it's a small private company. And I got a four month contract working on the Australian Performing Arts Market, which was like a conference, conference and festival all in one pretty big thing. And I just thought, Oh, I'll do this. And that will be it but I kept hinting. Hey, you know, if you need me, for WOMAD, I'll do I'll do anything. I'm here. Very organized, very passionate. And I've got all this experience. It's not exactly you know, what you may need. But I gradually took on some different roles, They changed and evolved and evolved. And probably by about 2009, I had a major programming role. And now as Associate Director, which is a relatively new title, I am working with that director, but I'm definitely the person who's responsible for creating the program in the main and also overseeing a lot of the logistics with the various teams with marketing, publicity, travel and operations, production, all of that. So it's a really huge, really amazing job. And at the core of it is getting to choose beautiful music for a beautiful event. And I'm not sick of it at all.
Chelsea
Absolutely. Dream job. I think
Annette
It really is
Chelsea
How do you think that background in media and PR supports you in that leadership role now,
Annette
Oh it's so useful, I do quite a lot of copywriting and editing and proofing of all of the documents and media releases and brochures and everything that we do, because
Chelsea
Because you know about the artists.
Annette
I know about the artists
Chelsea
Yes. It has to be programming, it's always us writing all the copy
Annette
And we do have a copywriter who I send everything to and he writes the first blurb which I then edit and what you know, what he or she may present me with might be quite quite factual and correct. and all of that, but it might be missing a little bit of the va va voom that's necessary. And if I've seen the band live, then I'll have an extra understanding of what it is they'll bring to the festival, and how you should describe them to an audience who's never heard of them. So that's a really, really big thing. It's it's invaluable that that writing communications background that that I have, probably annoys the hell out of our publicity manager. Because I’m a savage editor. But it's, it's really important, what we do, and we work together. And we've got a quite an amazing long term team here of people who've been here, five, or 10 or more years. And so we know and trust each other really well, aside from getting on really well, which is great.
Chelsea
Inclusion and diversity across programming is something that's naturally, you know, part of WOMADelaide it's just a festival program that is always so exciting, because it's such a broad range of music and people from all parts of the world. There's a lot of festivals around the country that you know, have been slow to incorporate different genres. And there's been a lot of conversations in the industry and in media, around calling out festivals to be more diverse and more inclusive. What do you think needs to happen for us to see a more inclusive music industry in Australia?
Annette
Ah, it's not a simple thing to address. Because I think it does take time to make change. And I mean, there's probably a lot of people out there who think there's Annette and she's been with WOMAD for forever, you know, give someone else a go, for goodness sake. And that's, that's fair enough. And I will move on at some stage. So where there is a really unfavorable rusted on leadership within a venue or a festival, it does make it really hard for change to happen. I wouldn't say that I'm somebody who just always embraces change. I'm not. I like things to feel feel good and feel comfortable. And I don't like conflict. And you know, but things have to change, music changes, the world changes, and you change with that, hopefully. And how you find that platform for new people to come into the scene to make those changes is just an endless and enigma of a question. We try and do things like have internships and you know, new people, young people, even the academy that I mentioned before, you know, where we're introducing people into a world where hopefully, in a few years time, they will have learned so much and moved up in their understanding of things that they can come in and work with us as well. I think some people are just really blind to what their programming, you know, there are plenty of festivals who just go for big names with no regard for whether it is a diverse lineup, or whether there's, you know, great number of women in the lineup, and there are a great number of women artists out there for sure. So a lot of people that just it just does not occur to them. It's really it comes down to laziness. And I'm not saying that anyone should program by some tick a box, you know, okay, this event is 50% women, because people are telling me it has to be I think, as I said that our program, we want to produce the very best mix of artists. And sometimes we try for, you know, outstanding artists that we can't get, which might mean that on paper, a lineup looks like it's got, you know, like too many Americans or too many men. But behind the scenes, there's a lot that people don't that people don't know what's been going on to get to that point. It would be really nice if training and workshops could happen more openly between festivals and grassroots organizations. I do do them. I've done done quite a few through zoom in the last couple of years, where I really hope that doors are being opened for younger people and people from all cultures to get the foot in the door. But I don't know Chelsea, it's I feel like I operate very much from the heart which is not a terribly businesslike way to be a program director, and so I’d be just appalled if somebody said to me your festival is not diverse enough, because it just comes naturally to us, it is what we do. You know, it's really, I think a lot of other festivals have started to change and follow and evolve, you know, golden plains and even blues fest, you know that they are inviting artists that perhaps they wouldn't have 10 years ago.
Chelsea
Yes, it's slow progress. But I do feel like we are getting somewhere. But I think you're right, it is a really complicated topic. It's a big issue. And something and I've talked about this on the podcast, before, I'm all about the multi prong attack, you know, I think, true change that needs to happen culturally across the country needs to happen from all angles, it needs to be from media, it needs to be in the education sector, I think festivals get a lot of, you know, shade and attack thrown at them. Because you can visibly see on the poster, a list of names. And it's easy to, you know, you see those Instagram accounts where they delete all of the the men off the poster and you only see two women's names there. It's easy to do that for, you know, a poster of a festival. But if you looked at the diversity of artists signed to a record label, it would probably be even worse, you know, but there isn't this petitions attacking major labels about the amount of female artists that they sign or the amount of diversity on rosters because it's just not as transparent as a festival bill. But it's a great place to start that there's a conversation around festivals, and hopefully it expands to more areas of the industry. And I think artists as well have a responsibility. And when people you know if there's male musicians who are band leaders who only ever choose to play with other male musicians, well, then, as a festival director, well, that's all you've got to choose from, they have all men in their band. And it's either I booked the band or I don't. So you know, we also need musicians to think more about why they want to present mono cultures on stage and what that's about from the musician, community. So I think it's, it's good that we're having these conversations, they weren't happening 20 years ago, on this level. So I think it's an exciting time, and there is progress. But yeah, it's quite slow.
Annette
I really agree with you that education and media are very, far more wide reaching than what us as a festival organization, can be and there needs to be massive change there. I will say that we have an amazing number of women on our staff and crew. In fact, all of our stage managers are women, all of our assistant stage managers are women. We have a really powerful base of women who work on and present and produce this festival, which is really awesome. In terms of inclusion and diversity, we're always looking at ways that we can work with local and national organizations to further that relationship. We worked with music in exile this year, for the first time to deliver three bands to the festival. We're working on our Reconciliation Action Plan, which is a very long process with an amazing local First Nations agency, who are literally speaking to all of our sponsors, and suppliers and previous First Nations artists to see, I guess, you know, we're trying to look in the mirror and see where we stand on those fronts and see what we can do better. We're about to do a very similar thing. We hope with accessibility, we've got a lot of things in place for and I mean that on two different fronts by people who have a disability being able to attend the festival and feel included. And we do have lots of things in place at the moment that we want to do better. But also by accessibility, I mean, making the festival accessible to communities that cannot perhaps afford to come. So we usually donate something like 300 to 400 tickets to, you know, refugee community Aboriginal organizations. So you know, you can only do these things with the benefit of time, a bit of money and somebody who has the will to make to make these things happen. And we are not perfect, but we want to do the best we can so that we are making everyone feel welcome at WOMADelaide. That's for sure.
Chelsea
And thank you so much for joining me on the control podcast. It's been so great to chat with you.
Annette
Thank you so much for having me and all the best with the rest of the series.
