Petworth Literary Festival launches on back of doubled audiences
Note the name change. It’s a significant one. Last year it was the Petworth Literary Week. This year it’s the Petworth Literary Festival – a change which reflects continued expansion and success.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always lovely
00:07to speak to Stuart Collins, Artistic Director of Pepworth Festival and also the newly renamed
00:13Pepworth Literary Festival. It's become Pepworth Literary Festival this year, which reflects
00:18a huge growth, doesn't it? And huge success over the years.
00:23Well, thanks, Phil. Yes, I mean, it's quite funny. We started off just over 10 years ago
00:28as the Pepworth Literary Weekend. And after about four years, we realised that we were
00:36running between Tuesday and Sunday and it couldn't be described as a weekend anymore.
00:40That sounds like a nice weekend.
00:40So we changed to Literary Festival. Yeah, that's right. Good. Yes, exactly.
00:46Stop work on the end of Monday. That's right. But then, literally, last year, we saw,
00:53realised that we were stretching to almost two weeks. So we thought, well, we can't even call
00:57it a literary week anymore. So we went for the obvious natural follow up to that and just called
01:02it the Pepworth Literary Festival, which seems to be appropriate and can probably run for as
01:07long as it likes. And that really shows its strength,
01:11that it's grown so naturally over the years. What do you put that down to? Obviously,
01:16there's the thirst and the interest, isn't there, as a starting point?
01:19Definitely. I mean, there are various factors. It's never really possible to pin things down
01:25exactly. And I'm sure my marketing officer would say, it's all down to me. But I think
01:33my answer to that is that we've sort of gradually taken steps up in terms of the authors we're
01:40attracting, in terms of the variety of people who are coming, and actually also in terms of
01:45the quality of our interviewers, so that you're actually now attending events, by and large,
01:51given by very, very well-known faces, and being very, very well interviewed by extremely competent
01:59journalists and specialists in their subjects. And suddenly, it's just become a really fascinating
02:05fortnight, where it's like, I don't want to overstress this, but it's a bit like going
02:10back to school. I'm sorry about these bangs. People keep sending me emails. It's like going
02:15back to school that you keep hearing, going into lectures, and hearing really clever people talking
02:22about very interesting subjects. And you go away, and you just feel enriched. And I think there are
02:27an awful lot of people who really enjoy that opportunity to sit for an hour with someone
02:33very interesting, probably quite well-known, and listen to them talk about what they've
02:38been writing about, which, as I say, is invariably fascinating, because a publisher has chosen to
02:42publish it.
02:44Absolutely. And you've got a fantastic lineup for this year. But before we talk about that,
02:49let's reflect on the massive leap that you had between 2022 and 2023 in terms of attendance.
02:57Yeah, that is remarkable. And again, we haven't quite been able to put our finger on it, but we
03:02just sort of feel very pleased that it happened. No, well, the stats that you refer to is that
03:08literally our sales doubled year on year, which is an extraordinary thing. In a bullish year,
03:16we look to sort of grow by sort of seven and a half, 10% or something like that, but actually
03:21literally to double. So it was down to the quality of a lot of the authors, no question.
03:27But also, it's just sort of momentum, I think, that there has been a very positive feeling about
03:33the festival for quite some time. And it's just-
03:35The challenge is to hang on to that increase for this year.
03:38Oh my goodness, yes. But it's funny, every single year after every single festival,
03:44sort of quite a few people just come up to me and tap me on the shoulder and say,
03:48well, how are you going to follow that then? And of course, that's the difficult thing because-
03:52You make it hard for yourself.
03:54Well, yeah, you do. On the other hand, you just get on with it. And that is the job.
03:59You know, I start looking a little earlier, I get a little bit more sort of choosy on who
04:07I approach for the invitations. And fortunately, because we've now been established for quite some
04:13time, and the publishers know us, the publicists know us, the authors tend to go back having said
04:19they've had a good time. All of that just adds up. And I think that explains why-
04:23It's all of those things, isn't it?
04:25Yeah, exactly.
04:26Thank you. Dame Judi Dench, Robert Harris, David Baddiel, Kate Moss, Pam Ayers, Claire Balding,
04:31just to mention a few. It's pretty good, isn't it?
04:36It is exciting. Yes, it's funny as you sort of sign these people up, you realise what you're
04:42looking for is that you can get a nice good chunk of names that people are going to recognise.
04:48There'll obviously be lots of people who are not necessarily recognisable who are writing
04:53about really interesting subjects. But this year, that list of names just kept growing.
04:58It's fantastic. And in the end, we had about 14 people we felt we could put on the front
05:03of the brochure where, you know, you can only get eight. So it's very, very exciting.
05:08Brilliant. And your reward once it's all over is presumably fairly soon to start
05:12thinking about the Summer Essentially Music Festival.
05:16Yes, I mean, it's a conveyor belt. It's not anything more harsh than that. But, you know,
05:26that's the job. It's really exciting. Today is a really exciting day. We launched the festival,
05:33you know, isn't that brilliant? And then, you know, the next target is to make sure that,
05:38you know, I try and raise that bar again for the summer. So yeah, that is the...
05:44It's always a pleasure. It's always a challenge. Yeah.
05:47Brilliant. Well, congratulations on the programme. Looks superb.
05:50Lovely to speak to you, Stuart. Thank you.