new festival director

it has just been announced publicly, but at the start of November Fiona Stuart will become only the fifth Lichfield Festival Director in 28 years. To quote from the press release Fiona is

currently director of the Chorlton Arts Festival and also community outreach manager for the Royal Northern College of Music.

She replaces Richard Hawley, director since 2004, who has accepted a fellowship with the Clore Leadership Programme, and leaves Lichfield at the end of October.

Fiona said: “I am delighted to have been offered the post of Festival Director of The Lichfield Festival. The Festival has helped to place Lichfield on the map as a centre for wide-ranging and innovative arts and has an important place in enriching the life of the local community. I am excited about getting to know this community and also about working within such a strong, established team.

“With a successful 28-year history behind it, the Festival has established itself as a forward-thinking and groundbreaking arts organisation, and I look forward to building on the success of Richard Hawley and his predecessors in bringing together the best in local, national and international arts.”

As director of the Chorlton Arts Festival, Fiona was responsible for planning, promoting and delivering one of the largest festivals in Greater Manchester, and over three years was able to double the size of the festival and treble its audience figures.

At the Royal Northern College of Music she has been part of a team devising and delivering community events, providing participation opportunities for over 2,500 young people. As part of this programme, Fiona produced West Side Story, the largest project ever undertaken by the outreach department and designed to give talented children from deprived areas the opportunity to work alongside professional directors, choreographers, musicians and theatre crew.

Nick Sedgwick, Chairman of the Lichfield Festival’s board of directors, said: “We selected Fiona from a strong field of candidates from around the country for her special combination of qualities and experience. Her work at Chorlton and at the RNCM involves the whole community and she will quickly bring those skills to bear in Lichfield. “

shortlisted

earlier today we found out that the Lichfield Festival and our long-term Principal Partner BMW Plant Hams Hall have been shortlisted in the Sustained Partnership category for this year's Jaguar Land Rover Awards for Arts & Business. All shortlists will be announced in The Birmingham Post next week, and winners will be announced at Birmingham Town Hall on 15 October.

as a sneaky wee peek for those that read this blog, the lichfield literature brochure can be found here although it has yet to go up on the festival website...

and, as at close of play today, I will be out of the office for the next two weeks doing this here.

lichfield literature

This morning the last seven tickets for Katie Adie were grabbed, which means we've sold out within a week, and we've just added another Very Hungry Caterpillar show due to demand, so over 60% of the available seats have already been booked over the four performances.

Other authors speaking include David Aaronovitch on the role of conspiracy theories in modern history; historical novelist Barbara Ewing; Lawrence Goldman, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; crime crime writers Sophie Hannah and Peter Robinson in a Lichfield Library double bill; Tobias Hill discussing his latest novel The Hidden; historian Robert Hutchinson on the Dukes of Norfolk; Andrew Lambert on Captain John Franklin's doomed expedition (perfect, I think, for a city that honours doomed captains); Stephen Lyttelton discusses collating his father's last writings, David Charles Manners speaks about the impact of India on his life, David Nokes speaks his new biography of Samuel Johnson as a nod to the tercentenary, mathematician Ian Stewart, explorer Sara Wheeler on the arctic, Frances Wilson on Dorothy Wordsworth; and Matthew Yeo on the history of the book.
We are also holding an Open Mic event for local authors to come and share their writings.

Tickets will probably go on sale on Tuesday, but keep an eye on the festival website to be certain.

should I be resisting twitter?

many months ago I grabbed @lichfieldfest as a twitter name, knowing full well that sending minute by minute updates from my mobile during the festival, while simultaneously running a blogsite, doing my job and looking after a six month old puppy just wouldn't happen. since then, and while I have yet to issue a single update via twitter, we've amassed 38 followers (I realise 'amassed' may not be the most appropriate word).
I've gradually updated the site every now and then (just worked out how to get my logo up today), but I just can't get beyond thinking that twitter as a vehicle of communication for a festival like Lichfield's just isn't the best way forward. The flipside of that argument, which I readily acknowledge, is that a festival like ours should use every possible way to communicate with as big an audience as possible.

On a quick trawl through similar festivals, it seems to be only significantly bigger ones that utilise twitter to any great effect, although @spitsmusic and @eastneukfest seem to be valiantly proving that statement to be incorrect:

@cheltfestivals
@edintfest
@bbcproms
@mifestival
@brightfest
@harrogatefest

The nearby Birmingham Book Festival (@bhambookfest) also seems to be puttings theirs to good use.

adie on sale

tickets for the Lichfield Literary Dinner with Kate Adie as guest speaker went on sale at 9am this morning, and by noon half of the available seats had already sold. Go Kate! We may need to revisit this to see whether we can fit in a few more people than we were planning...
Having just returned from leave, I am belatedly at the final stages of scheduling the Lichfield Literature programme. While we'll be in a position to announce next week the full line up of speakers, one other event that we are already spreading the word about is a puppet show to mark the 40th anniversary of Eric Carle's masterpiece The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which continues our programming of events for families and young children. There will be three performances on Friday 9 October at Wade Street Church.