Hay Festival – arguably the most recognised and prestigious literature festival in the world – returns this May 2024 sporting snazzy new branding, embracing diversity and a rich cultural calendar. CEO Julie Finch talks candidly to Antonia LeVay about her vision.
Given your background is mainly in visual art, what inspired you to take on this role at Hay Festival?
At the centre of my career in museums and galleries was a really strong desire to connect audiences to art, and provide life-changing opportunities for people who haven’t discovered the arts in their broadest sense. With people who live in rural places and can’t get into cities easily, the arts play a very important part.
I really believe – and think I’m testament to this myself – that through the arts, you can become incredibly inspired. And that leads to all sorts of things. Art is also all about storytelling, as are our lives: we shape our lives by telling ourselves stories. So the idea that one can run a festival, with storytelling at its centre, is a really powerful and exciting proposition.
In terms of the broader perspective around engagement and democratisation of the arts, to the widest possible audiences – it was hard for the culture sector using the pre-COVID models, but it’s even harder now. So the more relevant we are to audiences, the more likely our survival, and that relationship and that ecology is absolutely central. So it’s not enough to show something and hope people will come.
Can you elaborate on the impact of COVID and – subsequently – the cost of living crisis?
We’re very conscious of the external environment from cost of living, to the impact of war and post-COVID recovery – where people have lost their jobs and others aren’t able to work as much. There are all these external factors, which we consider in ticket pricing, while at the same time looking at 20% rising costs. It’s a very challenging time for the cultural sector.
What we’ve got to remember is that we bring hope to society, and it’s critical that we remain positive. We’re trading on hope – that’s what we’re selling. We’re selling hope for the future. And when someone buys a [Hay] ticket, they will come away enlightened or thinking something different.
What are you hoping to achieve in this role?
Studying for one of my masters, it was looking at the difference between collectivism and individualism, and how individualism leads to loneliness – becoming disenfranchised, not connected – whereas collectivism is a really important part of the human psyche. If we do things together, in places where there is art, we are most likely to have the best effect in helping people to change their lives. I’m not saying everyone’s life has to change… but I think we’re constantly looking for new ways, thinking there’s got to be a better way.
The more we can enable people to experience joy, we can also think about things differently. I think that’s what the arts in general does, and I think it’s so important that artists are recognised as tellers of truth for the future. Writing does that in spades; exhibitions are incredibly important. New interpretations of historic art or historic texts are also really important.
Your #BookTok partnership between Hay Festival and TikTok, which launched last year, is an interesting development: how has that changed the literary audience? How are BookTokers engaging, particularly the younger readers?
What’s interesting about #BookTok is you don’t always see the top 20 [trending books on the hashtag] including all the new titles – it’s a range of historic and new ones. The romantic novel is so important [on #BookTok] – there’s a whole genre there that’s developing and selling broadly amongst young people. There’s a resurgence of discovery in reading amongst the younger generation – and a statistic that more young people go to public libraries now than ever before. Partly cost of living, but also recognising there are places for young people where there aren’t youth clubs or other activity. So book clubs are forming.
[Hay’s] relationship with TikTok began as a media partnership and has developed into something much broader: it helps us understand our audiences, the younger demographic, how we can attract those younger people to a festival. And it’s certainly having an effect – [attendees’] overall age is reducing on average as a result of working with TikTok.
What you’ve just outlined would go some way to breaking down that sense which exists of Hay being a bit elitist. In recent years, there’s been a greater general push for diversity and inclusion: how have you approached that in 2024?
It’s important for cultural institutions to diversify their audiences, but it’s also a long journey, and we’ve got to build trust and make people feel welcome. I think there is a supposition that we are elite, but I’m from a working-class background – you wouldn’t know, looking at me or listening to me. I wasn’t able to go to university when I was younger and made opportunities for myself as a mature student. I think there’s something to unwrapping myths around it being an entitled space.
For the last 18 months, we’ve been asking people who don’t come to a festival why that is. We’re very open to the comments coming back to us – holding a mirror up to ourselves, and gaining more of a consensus view rather than an insular one. A big problem was that people didn’t realise Hay is international. We’re also recognising that they don’t want content pushed at them, they want to feel autonomy and ownership over what they engage with.
By explaining our global story, we’re able to express the work we’re doing with young people internationally: in Colombia, for example, working with children in the barrios, some of them didn’t know what an author was, let alone own a book. We go out into communities across England and Wales, work with people in less wealthy areas, bring those people into the festival and enable them to feel that it’s a place for them. We run projects like Writers At Work, which we announced today – 10 Welsh writers, developing new talent and supporting the artists in different ways.
One of the big barriers has been the whole festival model where people assume it’s £300 to get in. Our tickets start at £7 and you don’t have to pay for anything – you can just be there, enjoy it, and enjoy the free stuff as well. That really made a difference last year, telling people it’s free to enter – be part of it and see if you can resist going to an event. Invariably, people can’t!
How do you engage the audience once they’re in?
Give the mic to the audience! There’s always a Q&A. A lot of festivals have stopped doing that. We’ve had kids standing up, teenagers, 100-year-olds saying, “Actually, no, what I think about this is this, what do you think about that…” It’s a democracy; a place where the audience are equal to the people on stage. It’s not a hierarchy. And we trust our audiences to ask the most brilliant questions. And if they don’t know, they’ll just talk to the next person or someone in the queue. Go get coffee, sit at a table with a family they’ve never met before and just talk about stuff.
Hay Festival, various locations, Hay-On-Wye, Thurs 23 May-Sun 2 June
Tickets: events priced individually (many FREE). Info: hayfestival.com
words ANTONIA LEVAY
