Walking through Montpellier Gardens last week the wind was rattling the trees and dislodging the first leaves of the Autumn. I realised with a lurch in the pit of my stomach that the template for the wonderful new Festival Quarter site is being pegged out in white tape, and that we really are into the final countdown.
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The office is overflowing with piles of books.... |
Here at Lit Fest HQ the days and weeks seem to be rushing inexorably on to the great moment when we assemble excitedly (and rather apprehensively) for the first 8.30am briefing of the Festival on Friday 7th October. There will be almost 100 people in the room, the core team, the event managers, the production staff and over 60 wonderful volunteers, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and raring to go, who sign up to work nine fourteen hour days unpaid, and without whom the Festival simply wouldn’t happen.
In the meantime, the nerve-wracking period of signing off the brochure and seeing the tickets go on sale has given way to a vast amount of administrative heavy lifting as all the detailed planning that can only happen once the programme is finalised is put into place.
Piles of beautiful, pristine books are arriving from publishers daily, often hot off the press, and sometimes still in proof form. In every corner of the office bookshelves are stacked three rows deep with these treasures, begging to be opened and perused if only any of us had the time! Isabella, from of our indispensable team of three interns is charged with the mammoth task of ensuring that each book gets to the person who needs it for his or her event.
Now that our able and experienced chairpeople have all been signed up, they are busy working with participants to shape “their” events in the most stimulating and thought-provoking way for our knowledgeable Cheltenham audiences. It is a privilege to be copied in on this email traffic, and witness animated (even heated) digital debate on the all-time greatest literary deathbed scenes, the most influential Edwardians or what part of Virgil’s Aeneid would be the most fun to translate on stage.
Signed contracts are pouring back into the office, along with the technical requirements, travel arrangements, ticket requests and accommodation needs of over 600 participants. All of this information needs to be entered onto our amazing Artifax software system, which will generate the Festival daysheets - the essential who, when, where and what of the Festival hour-by-hour.
Often the contracts are accompanied by hand-written notes from authors kindly praising the programme or wishing us all good luck. A very distinguished author writes in immaculate copperplate to politely request a hotel room as near as possible to the Festival site. A food historian emails to request access to a freezer and a large amount of ice. A well-known broadcaster phones to find out if he can bring his dog to the Festival.
One participant has simply scrawled CAN’T WAIT! in exuberant black felt pen across the top of her contract. And in truth, neither can we. See you there!
Nicola Tuxworth
Festival Co-ordinator
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