Bristol Harbour Festival: ‘There’s not many cities that deliver something that is this size and scale’

It’s a big year for one of the most exciting events going on in the city as Bristol Harbour Festival celebrates a special anniversary. We catch up with some of the people involved in organising the event, including Kellie, the Director of Plaster communications, Ben, the managing director at Richmond Event Management (organisers of the festival), Will, curator of the Thekla stage on The Grove and Tony, curator of the Bristol Music Stage.

So this year’s theme for Bristol Harbour Festival is ‘Ebb and Flow’ – how did that come about and how will it be reflected in the programme of events?

Kellie: Ebb and flow is all about kind of why Bristol is a city of the people and a city of people arriving and people making the city their home, we wanted to reflect that this year.

Ben: And that’s the challenge that’s been given to all the curators. But there’s going to be a community program as well, where seven artists are going out to the communities and inviting them to make pieces that reflect on ebb and flow and reflect on the meaning of the harbour to them. This could be spoken word poetry, an hour’s takeover on a music stage, etc.

What would you say the biggest challenges are each year when you put this event on?

Ben: I could probably split that into a couple of different themes; there’s definitely a number of challenges for the programmers around content. From an operations point of view, the biggest challenge is normally is around the fact that most festivals you put a fence up, you have a gate and you can control different people coming in and out. You can’t do that here; it’s a living, breathing city. So that’s definitely a struggle.

Tony: The biggest challenge is how good can I get for the budget, basically. We always want to have a really good headliner, and have so we were pretty lucky for several years because we had DJ Derek who loved the festival and we loved him. It was a classic, Saturday night closer and it absolutely brought the house down. It’s also just one man in his deck; economically, logistically, it was a kind of really perfect way of having a great headliner.

How do you prepare for such an event when it’s not just one venue or enclosed in one space?

Ben: The festival actually takes place over about two kilometers of the harbour. There’s not many cities that deliver something that is of this size and scale, probably even for the size of budget that we’ve got. Over the years have created a plan where we break the site down into zones, and then also into venues. The amphitheater is one space and it’s got a management plan in place, so if it gets overcrowded, we can close it off, which is what we do with different spaces.

Bristol’s maritime history is proudly on display throughout the weekend, credit: Paul Box

Bristol has a very strong reputation as being a green city; how will you be supporting that at the festival?

Ben: We don’t put anything in landfill and haven’t done for about five or six years now, everything is recycled. All of our suppliers are from a 50 mile radius, we have a policy that all caterers have to use recyclable food packaging. Already all the toilet waste goes down to Avonmouth and is turned into biogas. And the other advantage is, where most festivals the majority of carbon is produced from people coming and going, the beauty of this is because it is in the heart of a city most people get public transport or will walk.

Bristol is not only known for it’s music scene but also is renowned for its food – how do you narrow down the food stalls?

Ben: we tend to slowly just go through each pitch we’ve got and do a bit of a manual selection process. As much as we’d like it all to be independent food stalls, some of them can’t completely cater for the sheer volume we’ve got. So then the story you’d have on Monday is, Bristol Harbour Festival was a great gig but the food queues were like ridiculous. But the great thing is because the site is so big, and there’s all these lovely nooks and crannies and other places we can yeah, there’s a lot of space to put a lot of things.

One of the main draws of Bristol in general is the music scene; can you tell us a little bit about what’s on the programme for this year?

Will: I mean, there’s so much going on. I’ve come from London and this city is a fraction of the size, but it really packs a punch in terms of its cultural status.

Tony: But it has been a bit of an issue this year because of the two year gap. Normally, you kind of have a sense of whose doing what but everything stopped and I’m still trying to get my head around whose back? The biggest challenge is how good I can get for the budget. And we always want to have a really good headliner, and have been pretty lucky for several years because we had DJ Derek who loved the festival and we loved him. I can’t say much about this year’s headliner is not confirmed but I do think it’s somebody who was worthy of the return after three years.

Main photo: Paul Box

Read more: Harbour Festival set to celebrate 50th anniversary in style this summer

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