AIF Congress Returns to Cardiff

The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) has announced initial details of its annual Festival Congress event, taking place in Cardiff for its fourth year on October 30^th and 31^st.

With a theme of ‘Pseudoscience’ exploring the parallels between festival organisers and scientists, the event will be led by a keynote by artistic director and CEO of Manchester International Festival, John McGrath. In addition to quick fire talks from renowned author Zoe Cormier about her book sex, drugs and rock n roll: The science of hedonism and the hedonism of science, and John Kampfner, Chief Executive of the Creative Industries Federation, who will speak about creative industry ‘red lines’ on Brexit.

There will also be a ‘Question time’ style panel exploring political issues in relation to festivals, with other key topics at the conference including event security, welfare, booking processes, up scaling small festivals and creative production. Another headline panel discussion will explore the next steps of AIF’s ‘Safer Spaces’ campaign, which reiterated the zero tolerance approach that festivals have to sexual assault with a 24 hour coordinated website ‘black out’ in May.

AIF Co-Founder Rob da Bank said: “We’re back for a fourth year with Festival Congress, the ultimate conference and festival party for the independents. We’re proud of how essential this event has become and all at AIF HQ are buzzing to be joining the dots between festival promotion and science this year, in what promises to be a packed and extremely fun couple of days in Cardiff”.

Find out more and get tickets here.