The festival ended three to four weeks ago. The adrenaline is finally out of your system. Some of your team took vacation. A holiday weekend may have come and gone. The emotions have mostly settled. You still like your coworkers. And now, this week, the meetings are starting to populate again. This is the window…
Read MoreIt's the Sunday after wrap. It's 2pm. You're in your kitchen. The laundry basket has been at the foot of the bed for three weeks. The fridge contains seven half-eaten things you can't identify. The garden has gone feral. There is mail on the counter you stopped opening in week one of pre-production. You haven't…
Read MoreThirty-six seasons is a long time to do anything. It is long enough to see every kind of festival leader succeed and fail. Long enough to watch brilliant operators burn out in…
Read MoreIt is 2am -- or it is 5am, which is the same thing by that point in the production week. Something has changed. Not the thing you planned for. The other thing. The one that wasn't in any of the scenarios you mapped before the event opened. Your operations director is looking at…
Read MoreYou have been doing this long enough to know that the hardest festivals to lead are never the ones where the stage collapses. They are the ones where you do. Not visibly. Not in front of anyone. But somewhere in the…
Read MoreYou approved the $40,000 staging upgrade without a second thought. You signed the lighting package. You didn't blink at the hospitality rider that costs more than some people's annual salary. But when it came time to invest in yourself - - in your own development as the person who makes every…
Read MoreFive generations on your festival team - and nobody told you how to lead them. Here's why the fault line forms and what to do about it. Here’s the thing. Your 55-year-old stage manager and your 24-year-old production assistant are standing three feet apart on the same site visit. Same briefing. Same directive from you. And somehow…
Read More
