Christopher BarrettThe creators of Festival and Carnival Lab, a course designed to increase the representation of senior Black producers in the event industry, are calling on festival operators to provide opportunities to its alumni.
Launched by the team behind Glastonbury’s Shrangi La and other themed areas at festivals such as Camp Bestival, Boomtown and Shambala, the goal of the programme is to open the industry up to young people who may otherwise be excluded.
The initiative’s co-founder Chris MacMeikan, music director at multi-service event production agency Continental Drifts, said the programme is designed to support the next generation of event producers in developing their ideas, skills and knowledge through a mixture of talks from industry specialists, workshops and hands-on experience. Areas covered include technical production, carnival management and crowd control, working with local authorities, venue and stage programming, and artist liaison.
Said MacMeikan, “After 30 years of working on event productions for all communities, we were really surprised by the lack of people from the Black community running things. The more we investigated this and looked for Black production workers, the more we saw there was this crazy imbalance. So, we started a free course; the first one aimed purely at creating new Black senior producers.
“With the course now in its third year, it’s been really successful; with many alumni going into full time jobs. The community of Access All Areas, Power Of Events and festivals including Glastonbury, Shambala and Boomtown have been so helpful and understanding. If you feel you have room for any producers for your events from the Black community, we will happily supply people all trained and ready to go. Between us we can make real societal change. Get involved.”
More information can be found here.