FESTIVAL REPORT 2012 hay festival wales 2012 festival report Contents Our 25th festival in Introduction 3 Hay invited our friends to imagine the world how it is Festival in Numbers 4 and how it might be. 2012 Innovations 5 The Sound Castle 6 Honours 8 ACW International Fellows 2012 9 Simon Armitage’s Haykus 10 University Partnerships 12 Campaigns 14 The Way We Live Now 15 Our Local Community 16 The Authors 19 Hay Fever & Programme for Schools 20 The Scribblers Tour 23 Hay-on-Earth 26 Social Media 29 Media Report 31 Sponsors 36 ‘ You are in the middle of a field in Wales… Yet you are thinking about the entire world.’ Sarah Crompton Daily Telegraph 2. HAYFESTIVAL.ORG hay festival wales 2012 festival report Introduction I think it was always about The 2012 festival took place in the challenging circumstances the craic. I can remember a of extreme austerity, epic rainfall and a UK-wide focus on the bunch of us sitting around Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. In the face of all this, attendance was my mother’s kitchen table, up 11% as people from 53 countries came to Wales to share stories twenty-five-and-a-bit years and to exchange ideas about literature, the environment, history, ago, and my father talking science, politics and the future. Minds were changed, friendships about poetry and ideas and were forged, and new voices were found and heard. music. I can remember dreaming The festival extended our ambitions engaging new about meeting heroes and campaigns, exploring new partnerships, and developing new changing minds. And my programming initiatives that resulted in reaching new audiences at mother said - ‘it’s got to be a home and abroad. party’. And it’s been a blast. The core of the festival will always be the readers and their What a ridiculously lucky, creative writers who imagine the world how it might be if you were happy journey. released from being you. They reconnect you with the fantastical world of imagination that is the greatest gift of being a child. And in remaking the world they make a case for human rights – the rights to live and love and die in freedom. Peter Florence Festival Director 3. HAYFESTIVAL.ORG hay festival wales 2012 festival report Festival in Numbers c o m b i n e d 11.8 million t w i t n i g t r u t e h o r t e r s e w a c w h o o r e t l i l s l d e 225,000 n s F t o l e a d A 2 n k o l C c ti i W n a t o I n t e r s r f e e n o 72,000 t i c stival va s s e l t F ue k y n a to k e e H c t l h o s a a o d t r u n b o i e t t t w y s 1,544 p H y a it a r s £1 million+ t r n y e m v e U n i r 2 a O x 5 e s f a r y m s r 1 a i a n e y f 4 c - a e d v o c u r i s g r o a l r e m p o r m n u o e t o h r s r 3,000 c i s o 74,000 d e f c d r s s h e p 6 k i o l d f l o d r e n o w a c o e n att r 5 0 0 e o n i B HAYFESTIVAL.ORG hay festival wales 2012 festival report 2012 Innovations Hay Fellowships Cinema The inaugural Hay International Fellowships visiting all The opening of the first cinema in Hay for 50 years our festivals around the world were held by Jon Gower offered us the opportunity to programme filmmakers and Tiffany Murray. The project is supported by ACW. and films from India, America, Wales and Scandinavia, and feature The National Theatre of Wales’ ground- Writers In Residence breaking Port Talbot Passion. Simon Armitage (poetry), Jan Blake (storytelling) and The Olympics Nell Leyshon (theatre) worked at Hay all week creating new work and performing. To celebrate the London 2012 Olympics we launched a Classics Series with Britain’s top Classicists including Commonwealth Writers Paul Cartledge and Bettany Hughes promoting Greek culture alongside international stars Madeline Miller A new partnership with the Commonwealth and Alice Oswald. Foundation brought writers from nine countries to Hay for debates, readings and the Commonwealth Writers Prince’s Drawing School Prizes for fiction and short stories. A new partnership brought hugely popular free life- The Way We Live Now drawing masterclasses for festival-goers of all ages to the Moot venue. We celebrated the festival’s 25th anniversary with the creation of an online library of writing and ideas from our readers and festival-goers around the world as they answer 25 Questions posed by our guest writers and thinkers. 5. HAYFESTIVAL.ORG hay festival wales 2012 festival report The Sound Castle The festival’s new music venture grew from the three years we spent rescuing Brecon Jazz, and is designed to showcase the most progressive international voices in jazz and folk music and to engage a younger, more diverse audience. 6. HAYFESTIVAL.ORG hay festival wales 2012 festival report The festival’s new music venture grew from the three years we spent rescuing Brecon Jazz, and is designed to showcase the most progressive international voices in jazz and folk music and to engage a younger, more diverse audience. The collaboration with Arts Council Wales, The Hay Castle Tr ust and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama was hosted in a 450-seater venue in the spectacular grounds of Hay Castle. Sarah Dennehy’s programming featured 36 concerts over nine days blending Welsh artists such as Cerys Matthews, 9 Bach, Julie Murphy, Paper Aeroplanes, The Gentle Good and Alex Valentine with emerging international stars Ola Onabule, Anchorsong, Christian Prommer, Speech Debelle, Lianne La Havas and Frente Cumbiero. The festival also promoted a full residency for the young musicians of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama who both performed and attended specially tailored masterclasses with the visiting musicians. Paula Gardiner comments – ‘I see Hay as a unique opportunity to develop our audience for ‘“courageous”’ jazz outside the specialised festival scene and there are no better people to persuade that audience than our students.’ The tudentss also attended the rest of the festival for free, reaching beyond their own disciplines to great effect. s d t l n o e s s y d a e u 36 d 12,000 4,600 t r 9 s c o r e t n e i t o ce rts ov w c k t ts ets w e n tic ke 7. HAYFESTIVAL.ORG hay festival wales 2012 festival report Honours Hay 25 Medals To celebrate our 25th anniversary in this Olympic year the festival awarded three medals, commissioned from local silversmith Christopher Hamilton. The poetry medal was awarded to Simon Armitage for his body of work over the last quarter century. The prose medal was awarded to Jeanette Winterson for her fiction, journalism, autobiography and online writing. The drama medal was awarded to the screenwriter Abi Morgan. The Barclays Nobel Series Laureates Daniel Kahneman, Mario Vargas Llosa and James Watson graced Hay. The Commonwealth Writers Prize The world’s prize with the widest eligibility is now being held at Hay as part of a global partnership. Shehan Karunatilaka received the 2012 award from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The Oxfam Emerging Writers Prize Was awarded to Nick Harkaway for Angelmaker and The Blind Giant. The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize The pig and Nebuchadnezzar for comic fiction award was presented to Terry Pratchett. 8. HAYFESTIVAL.ORG hay festival wales 2012 festival report ACW International Fellows 2012 – Tiffany Murray & Jon Gower Tiffany Murray Jon Gower Exchange was the key word this year. In onsite events One indelible memory of my Hay Fellowship: promoting Welsh Literature in English and Welsh, a schoolroom in Dhaka filled with the silver in schoolrooms in Bogata, Cartagena and Mexico, in chiming voices of girls naming all the rivers of community centres in Pozon (Colombia), at British Bangladesh, while the boys in the class barked out the Council sites in Bangladesh and Kenya, what we conversations of fishermen on river banks. Here was achieved was exchange. Not ideas in isolation but ideas their world in words. that have/will become concrete projects to bring back to Wales and, conversely, Welsh projects to be shared on Another was meeting the first young woman in a barrio the international stage. outside Cartagena to win a place at college. Words had transformed her, allowed her to break poverty’s grip. For me these range from a series of picture books with Her eyes, full of hope and anticipation, are a lingering Mexican artist Eme DeMario, to the translation of my image of an unutterably rich experience: a year when I novel Diamond Star Halo into Turkish, to educational was so often reminded that Hay works so well because projects in these countries that both Jon and I hope it has an empowering generosity at its heart. So, two will continue into the future, to a collection of creative final words.