ONEFEST: Festival Sector Professional Development

OneFest is a UK based, not-for-profit, Community Interest Company designed to support the emergence of new talent. OneFest started life as a social experiment, an intentionally diminutive event featuring the likes of Damon Albarn, Damien Rice, Laura Marling, The Magic NumbersRae Morris, Raghu Dixit, Dry the River and the immense power of music to bring people together, promote the value of community, sense of place and to create genuine opportunities.

the hub is currently working with OneFest on a pilot career development programme designed to diversify the music festival sector workforce. Having recruited a cohort of 6 young people keen to develop careers in the festival sector, we’re taking them through a 15 month programme that includes business training and mentoring, a work placement with a leading UK festival and the opportunity to be a key member of the OneFest team delivering the Lost Evenings festival at the Roundhouse in May 2017.

Our role has a focus on training, mentoring and supporting the cohort through their work placements. The training programme we put together included sessions on ‘getting under the bonnet’ of a festival, business planning, financial management and legal issues. We invited lots of our industry friends and colleagues to be part of this, so that the sessions were as practical and up-to-the-minute as possible. Meanwhile our regularly mentoring sessions ensure that our young entrepreneurs are on track to meet the targets they identified in the personal development plans we worked on with them, right back at the start of the programme.

We love working on programmes like OneFest because we love sharing what we know, and encouraging others to do the same, and because we want to be part of a music industry that is accessible to everyone, regardless of their background.

We’ll see you at the Roundhouse, right?!