MUSIC

Crashed bomber planes, sunken ships and an elephant on the loose: Mike White listens in as BrisFest 2011 takes shape.

“What’s happening with the elephant?” asks BrisFest organiser Poppy Stephenson. “It’s still in Coventry,” reports a volunteer. “We need a lorry to go and get it. It’s life size: 13ft long, 10ft high, and weighs over a tonne. But don’t worry, it’ll be there.”

There’s more to BrisFest than you might think. Not just the huge harbourside festival site, the after-parties, the hundreds of bands and DJs, the circus and all the rest – but the tiny details; fencing panels and forklifts, poster teams and policing. Above all, there’s a vast community- and arts-championing remit. Venue’s sitting in on a BrisFest planning meeting to find out how such a disparate and ambitious sprawl of ideas becomes a coherent, fully-functioning reality.

In a neat, air-conditioned office behind the Arnolfini, a dozen or so friendly twenty-somethings are sat in a semi-circle around Poppy, who gently chairs proceedings with encouraging nods and a big smile. Poppy’s the only paid member of the team – everyone else is working for free. To her right, volunteer manager Alice taps away at a laptop, adding to the ever-growing list of things Poppy will have to do once the meeting ends.

As each section leader reports back on progress, the scale of the undertaking becomes apparent: arranging the infrastructure and performers for nine different stages and ten nightclubs, organising street-teams and coordinating online marketing, sourcing suitably weird walkabout performers, keeping the cabaret acts happy, sorting the sponsorship for the VIP-area, haggling with the headline bands’ managers to get the best price… the list goes on and on. Despite the complexity of it all, a sense of calm confidence pervades. It’s all very ordered – one person speaks at a time; everyone knows what they’re doing. Say what you like about the pitfalls of collective decision-making, but this is impressive.

Back in 2007, the Bristol rain hammered down and turned Ashton Court estate into a mud bath. Damon Albarn –booked to headline with The Good, The Bad and The Queen – got back on his tour bus and went home, and Ashton Court festival went belly-up. Determined not to let that be the end of Bristol’s long tradition of community festivalling, the Bristol Festival Community group formed a few months later and set about creating a new event for the people of Bristol, “a not-for-profit event, offering high-profile exposure to local talent as well as an accessible, affordable festival for all”. In this, they succeeded – by summer 2008 the festival was in full swing, relocated to the mud-free harbourside, with a budget of £100,000 and 8,000 people swarming through the gates each day. It’s grown ever since – this year’s committee is 90-strong, and as party time approaches, their ranks are swollen by 300 extra volunteers and 2,000 artists. The budget’s nearly a quarter of a million.

Next year, Bristol’s by-the-people, for-the-people festival will return to Ashton Court. Poppy and her colleagues will be examining the site during this year’s Balloon Fiesta weekend. “Just a walkabout recce,” she says, “to see how the site operates with a major event underway.” The BrisFest team are in discussion with Balloon Fiesta organisers Richmond Event Management and things are “looking very promising”. BrisFest have already put tickets for the 2012 event on sale, and will announce headliners before Christmas. There are still several hoops to jump through, not least “getting North Somerset Council onside”, and working out policing numbers and costs. But the talk at BrisFest HQ about the return of a proper-job festival at Ashton Court is very much ‘how and when’, not ‘if’.

In the meantime, it’s all systems go for 2011. Indeed, things are so much in-progress that, as we go to press, none of the big-name headliners are yet confirmed. Last-minute negotiations are ongoing – at the planning meeting a handful of names are bandied around – by the time your correspondent has typed proceedings up, everything’s changed. So you’ll just have to check the BrisFest website nearer the time for the latest. As ever, there’s a strong emphasis on locally-sourced and up-and-coming talent, with hundreds of bands vying to fill out the non-headline spots. “There’ll be some arm-wrestling amongst the stage managers about who actually gets to play,” says Poppy, “or maybe thumb-war this year, just for a change.”

There’s discussion of using quadrophonic speaker systems for some outdoor stages, offering better sound for the crowd, but less noise pollution for everyone else. There will be plenty of pyrotechnics – a sponsor has been found to supply the gas for various flame-belching structures around the site. Excited discussion ensues as to what form these might take.

A stack of freshly-printed promo posters lies on the floor. “Take as many as you need,” says Poppy. “Stick them in your front window, in your car. Put them on boards on lampposts. Don’t blu-tac them by cashpoints – they’ll get taken down, and we can get done for littering. Posters on boards by the road are best, because the street cleaners are not legally allowed to take them down, because we’re a charity.”

This, their charity status, is something BrisFest could make more of. Its success as a provider of life skills and career development is considerable. Young offenders, people with learning difficulties and those struggling to find employment are all welcomed to help volunteer, and all those involved can take part in training courses, earn professional qualifications and gain first-hand experience to give them an edge in the job market. Does it really make a difference? “Yes, too much difference,” Poppy laughs. “We keep losing great volunteers because their BrisFest experience has landed them proper paid jobs!” Making the festival happen is a year-round job, and at every stage in the process, Bristol benefits. There’s the influx of cash from the festival weekend, the boost provided to local venues by the dozens of fundraiser nights, the exposure given to artists and performers, the profile-raising for Bristol as a destination city. The benevolent momentum of a band of optimists sharing pipe-dreams around a pub table has snowballed into a fully-fledged festival, built on cooperation and a bucket load of elbow-grease. Team BrisFest, we salute you.

Bring it on…

A whistle-stop tour of this year’s BrisFest fun

Crashed WW2 bomber planes, sunken ships, tropical island bars – even that life-size Indian elephant that's wandered in via Coventry… BrisFest 2011’s theme is 'Lost in the Bermuda Triangle'. Dress accordingly – and watch out for the flame throwers. “We thought we’d say goodbye to the dockside location with a bang!” says Poppy. As next year’s Fest will be nuzzling the grassy bosom of Ashton Court, this is the last year on the waterside concrete. So what will the lucky ticket holders get for their measly £16? Plenty, it seems.

Aim for the devil’s saucepan, jump through the hoop of fire or drop into the vortex black hole – these being some of the many puttable challenges offered by ‘ The World’s Best Portable Crazy Golf’ course, arriving at BrisFest after a national tour. Head out onto the waters on a beer-soaked boat party on the elegant 1920s river cruiser Tower Belle, or the Flower of Bristol with its panelled salon – though the hottest boaty ticket is surely Sunday’s sunset cruise on creaking timber replica ship Matthew.

Gawp at fire shows, circus stunts and titillating burlesque beauties in the cabaret tent, sup a rum in the sleek chrome Sailor Jerry Airstream bar. For those that like noise, the Gryphon tent will deliver a behemoth bill of heaviosity from the hardest hardcore to the pithiest punk – bands confirmed as we go to press include blastbeat monsters Honour Your Pain, post-hardcore masochists Hold To This and howling prog-thrashers Allure in Grace. If quiet is more your thing, guide your ears to the late-night Silent Rave, the runaway hit of last year’s fun. As our man on the scene reported at the time, “those in the know are queuing at an anonymous striplit kiosk, donning chunky headphones and gleefully bouncing into the crowd to rhythms unheard… There’s all the familiar fun to be had: removing your cans and listening to everyone else howling unselfconsciously along; flipping between channels and trying to guess what everyone else is dancing to. There’s dubstep and quickstep, psytrance and soul. It’s Busta/flip/Bee Gees/flip/Boney M.”

Rave on Avon – the many-headed club monster that unites ten nightclubs – will return on the Saturday night (see Clubs from p.61 for more on that), with a launch party on Friday called Rave on Avon Underground, in a secret location from 10pm-4am – Venue’s had a heads-up on where this’ll be, but we’re not telling you. Clues we are allowed to share are that it contains a bank vault, two stages and plenty of nooks and crannies for unexpected goings-on. There’ll be a second Underground party on Saturday night too.

The boys from Weapon of Choice gallery are programming a stage with a suitably beaty arsenal of acts, including (but far from limited to): Engine Earz Experiment (“Massive Attack for the dubstep generation”), Dub Pistols (“chewing up hip-hop, dub, techno, ska and punk and spitting them out in a renegade futuristic skank”), St Pauls’ aspiring rhymeslinger Buggsy and drum ’n’ bass pioneer DJ Die.

The main stage is once again called the Mr Wolfs stage, curated as it is by the excellent noodle-peddling gig venue of the same name. Highlights confirmed as we go to press include live techno party champs Million Way, big band breakbeat wonders Dub Mafia, frazzled psych dreamers Ouija Birds and even a work-out performance from Mr Motivator (can it be true?).

There will be talks from music industry insiders and a chance for aspiring musicians to play their demos to professionals in the biz and get some professional feedback and advice.

Make time for a session in the RFID (the Recursive Function Interactive Dome to its mum), a giant dance hemisphere with 360° projections swirling on all sides – stand dead centre and look straight up for best results. There will be interactive art installations dotted around the site, stalls and games, and a shade-dappled garden area replete with campfire for late-night singalongs. Though next year’s BrisFest’s will be in actual fields, in the meantime they’ll soften and greenify the amphitheatre’s unforgiving concrete expanses with a huge temporary lawn on which to laze. Please do walk on the grass.

BRISFEST HARBOURSIDE, BRISTOL, FRI 23-SUN 25 SEPT. DAY TICKETS FRI/SAT/SUN £8.11, WEEKEND TICKETS (ENTRY ON ALL 3 DAYS) £16.22, RAVE ON AVON £12.17, WEEKEND+RAVE ON AVON, £22.31. GROUP & VIP DEALS ALSO AVAILABLE. FFI: WWW.BRISFEST.CO.UK

Copyright Mike White 2011