Body and Soul has grown from being one of our favourite things about the Electric Picnic festival to being a major player in the Irish music scene in its own right.
The arts and music festival runs from June 20th to 22nd and is the brainchild of Avril Stanley, taking place on the grounds of the stunning Ballinlough Castle each year. The event invites attendees to “discover new music, interact with visual and performance art outside a traditional setting and celebrate life in all its shapes and colours” so we caught up with Avril to find out what it’s like to be at the helm of such a major event and what her favourite festival experiences have been.
When did you realise that you wanted to launch your own festival?
I didn’t know it was something I wanted to do until I went to a collection of various festivals myself. In my 20s, I travelled a lot, I went to Sri Lanka, Japan, South America and I came across these incredible cultural festivals along the way.
It was the culmination of these different experiences of colour, vision, celebration and culture that inspired me in a way that nothing else in my life ever has. That led me to a place where I realised that I loved it and it was something that I really wanted to bring home and instigate in Ireland and in time, from that, possibly elsewhere as well. The final catalyst for it was definitely Burning Man when I was 23. There was something about that moment, it sealed the deal that I had with myself to commit to doing something like that.
What sets Body and Soul apart from the other Irish festivals?
I would say that Body and Soul is an entire experience. There are many things that contribute to that. It’s an original music and arts festival but art is very much at the centre of it. When I look at the site, we have an amazing setting that is in the middle of a 15th century walled garden, lakeside and with woodlands. It’s a natural amphitheatre.
I believe our line-up is excellent, there is an inspirational arts trail, spoken word trail and, in essence, it’s a playground for the imagination. There is something for everybody and I think it is the attention to detail and the spirit of collaboration that sets us apart from the other festivals. That’s our backbone, we’re driven by it. We’re ultimately creating the kind of festival that we want to go to ourselves.
How do you approach booking acts for the festival?
It’s a collective decision, everybody on our team has an input into that selection. The music selection is essentially the soundscape for the entire weekend, it sets the tone and the mood of the festival. Another part that is very important to us is that we don’t compromise on our acts and we really stand by acts that we love ourselves.
We have to personally buy into the line-up that we produce. There is not a single act on the Body and Soul stage, whether it’s the Main Stage or the Midnight Circus stage, that we haven’t handpicked, listened to and seen live. If those boxes can’t be ticket, we don’t book the act. We need to be able to stand by them ourselves and know that they are fantastic. Some of those are well-known acts, some of them are very unknown acts but either way we’ll have done our homework and put in the energy into choosing each one of them, as well as putting time into the curation of it and figuring out which act works next to which.
We need to feel like ‘Oh my God, I can’t wait to go to this festival, I can’t wait to listen to these bands’ and more importantly, try to achieve the ultimate vision that I would have for it, where people just trust us in terms of what we do and if half of the bill has names that you’ve never heard in your entire life, you know that attention to detail has gone into it and you’re up for a really exceptional musical experience.
How do you make sure that the festival improves year on year?
I would say that one of the key things for us within the festival is that we listen to our audience and pay attention to their feedback on how they find the experience.
With that in mind, each year we really go back to the table and wipe down the canvas, almost give ourselves a blank canvas to start again, where we can deliver on what we promise our audience. That way, people can feel like their input is being heeded and listened to and they can have a role in how the festival itself evolves. Something that is incredibly important for us within Body and Soul is our audience and attracting like-minded people who really appreciate what it is that we are creating.
Body&Soul 2013 from Body&Soul Festival on Vimeo.
Has it been difficult to manage the growth of the festival?
Body and Soul started with a vision and that vision started 17 years ago as something I always wanted to grow organically over time in the right place, with the right people, on the right land. There has been a lot of patience around that in terms of taking our time. It’s not about growing quickly, it’s not about being driven by corporate values.
From the very early days, I always dreamt that Body and Soul would be its own festival. When we went into the Electric Picnic, we were very clear that we would create areas for them within the festival that were a sanctuary but outside of that, we were going to create a festival that was rock and roll meets spoken work meets electronic meets family meets masquerade ball. One of them was a particular offering that we were creating and curating on behalf of another event and our own festival was us putting a flag in the ground and saying ‘this is us, fully fledge, spreading our wings, this is what we are really about’.
What are your major challenges?
Surviving is our major challenge. Festivals need to offer something different and unique and you need to deliver on that while staying true to the original vision so that is a challenge. That whole side for me is the biggest challenge, communicating clearly and cohesively and drawing the right people to your festival that understand what you’re doing and want to be part of it.
You have to ask yourself why you are doing it and what your motivation is. You have to remind yourself of that many times and believe in what you started and keep going. If I didn’t have that, I would have run for the hills a million times because it’s challenging, difficult and there’s so many elements that you can’t control.
The weather is a challenge too! Thankfully we’ve been blessed but there have been challenging moments when you’re thinking ‘oh my God, we just spent nine months pouring our hearts and souls into this and I cannot believe that it’s starting to rain’ but you know what, it’s never as bad as it seems and it’s always worth it. You have to keep reminding yourself of that.
What are the rewards?
Seeing people standing there, watching incredible acts on the main stage, bands blowing people’s minds and seeing people touched by that, awe on their faces, children in utter disbelief looking at their parents, an old couple holding hands listening to beautiful poetry in the spoken word tent, a couple kissing for the first time after meeting at the festival, and sitting down with the crew at 2am to reco-ordinate with a grin on our faces and a glint in our eyes.
What has been your ultimate festival memory?
My favourite moment was last year on the Main Stage watching Nick Cave perform. Nick Cave normally plays for audiences of 100,000 people but last year, here he was at Ballinlough Castle with this incredible backdrop playing on a stage that we built to 6,500 people was in itself one of the biggest coups of our festival booking ever and he was electric, absolutely exceptional. The moon rose and you could just feel this ripple of energy. It was like watching a magician in front of us.
Goldfraap, Caribou and John Grant headline Body And Soul 2014. Further information and tickets priced at €139.50 are available from bodyandsoul.ie.
