“I’ve just about finished programming the theatre, all of the dance, the comedy, the cabaret theatre and I’m just working on the speakeasy… My head is in a bit of a spin”.
After the glorious weather last week, I can now say that summer is approaching fast. I’m speaking with Tania Harrison, co-creator of Latitude festival, who is responsible for curating and booking the cultural programme (in other words, the lion-share of acts). It’s a mammoth task, the four day festival will host hundreds of talks and performances across a variety of stages, tents and pop-up installations with thousands of guests expected.
Speaking with Tania, you get the impression of a rather unassuming powerhouse. Her twin passions are art and neuroscience (strangely, she’s not the first curator I’ve spoken to with this precise combination of interests). In conversation, she’s affable, quick to laughter and replete with fun anecdotes. Yet, though a disarming interview subject, you quickly sense that she has a formidable body of knowledge and wields real influence, programming not just for Latitude, but Leads and Reading festival. A sort of modern day Matthew Arnold, Tania is able to offer broad, panoptic reflections on movements across the arts or science, then drill down incisively into the work of specific practitioners. As our conversation moves lithely from clinical trials in the US, to a recent trend of gig-culture in the U.K., my pre-prepared questions quickly fall by the wayside and I follow her lead.
I want to learn more about the selection process. Over the years, Latitude has gained an excellent reputation discovering new voices. As well as programming staid, cultural figureheads, it has showcased riskier work and emerging talent: Kate Tempest (who has now created her own festival) caught an early break at Latitude, as part of their New Voices stage, Phoebe Waller-Bridge offered one of her first readings of Fleabag at Latitude, still on book, before taking it to Edinburgh and then the BBC. Tania describes her approach to curation as deeply subjective; “I kind of work on areas that I think will be interesting… well primarily what I find interesting, I guess”. Her tastes are her guiding principle, the festival bill an expression of her own curiosities writ large. She’s an insouciant booker.
Yet as we move into the practicalities of configuring the lineup, I get a more nuanced picture. I ask broadly about managing the set-lists and this prompts a unexpected deep-dive into the intricacies of Saturday’s 12-1.00pm slot. ‘Brilliant, I’m really pleased you asked me about that’ she states in response to a question I’m not fully sure I asked. She begins reeling through names and stages, confirmed and pending statuses, making quick judgements on the acts booked to perform, their suitability for the time. It’s somewhat unclear if she’s talking to me, or to herself, or possibly a hypothetical guest; it’s like she’s sound-boarding this lineup to everyone at once, approaching it from a variety of angles. I get a sense of the scale of her job: the hundreds of hours that require programming, the dozens of spaces that require filling the many possibly reactions to each, seemingly small, scheduling decision.
“The latitude audience is right across the board… scientists [and] experts, an older demographic, young children. It’s a really wide demographic. I’m trying think, what is relevant, what are the key things people might want to know about. So, that’s quite a heavy undertaking”. While Tania uses her own tastes as a barometer, she’s also envisioning a range of possibilities: possible experiences, possible guests, walking through different narratives, hour by hour. “I’ve got Kurrupt FM, I’ve got Novelist… What else do I have… What do I have on at the same time as Mumford and Sons?”
While often characterised as deeply pragmatic, concerned with ticket sales and bottom lines, events curation is fundamentally creative. One must be receptive to the artist’s vision (Tania often plays a formative role in developing work) as well holding countless possible audience members in mind, considering what they might want, what they might be open to,“You’ve got to kind of think what they might want to do at any one time”. The festival sees her balancing logistical considerations against imaginative possibilities; “You are at the whims of the artist,” she states “but at the same time you’re trying to make it right”.
Like any creative role, there’s a level of artistic anxiety associated with the task, a sense of exposure. She reflects on the first Latitude festival: “It’s a story I can look back at and laugh at now. When John and I were creating the first program, he said to me at one stage ‘what if nobody likes what we like?’ and you think…” We sit in silence for a brief moment, considering what it would feel like to discover that your deepest interests are wholly discordant with the general population. For me, it seems strangely nightmarish, akin to bombing on stage or wandering from the house naked. “A tense moment really. I say moment. Obviously I mean months”.
Over the years, she’s learnt to ignore these doubts. “When I really love something I won’t leave it alone. You have to be sure in yourself if it’s something you want to do. You have to have the courage of your convictions really”. She describes the process of booking artists like a war of attrition, “It took me for or five years to get David Shrigley to come. Usually they say yes, I think, because they get exhausted”. And this strength of conviction can be felt across the festival. There’s something distinctly weird about the Latitude landscape, a place where you can wander into a seance, be invited into a queen size bed by an actor, or beckoned into a caravan to witness an augmented reality performance addressing social mobility. When I mention this to Tania, she seems to delight in the festival’s wayward aspects. “There’s always something dark and dangerous” she comments “You’re supposed to have your boundaries tested”.
To many, Tania’s job may seem almost fantastical, like some art-world equivalent of a full-time chocolate taster. Yet the task weighs heavily. She is constantly scoping new work, watching shows around five times a week, and compiling lineups sometimes years in advance. Latitude is never far from her mind; though limited to a few days a year, the project itself is unending. It’s one of those frustrating ironies that people who dedicate their lives to the entertainment of others are often the last to take pleasure in their own work. I ask her what the festival is like for her, is she able to enjoy it at all? “luckily it’s not about me” she answers with a rather, glass-half-full sort of logic. “Because it’s not enjoyable for me is it? Everyone else is having a good time, which means I’m running around stressing… I don’t know anyone who thinks, God I’ve got this enormous project on, and [is assuming it will be] like christmas day”.
“What is really enjoyable is watching everyone have a good time”. Tania describes a scene from years ago. A performance of Swan Lake was occurring outside and she noticed a strange horde surrounding the stage and leading across the bridge. Sensing some calamity, she darted to the stage to figure what was wrong, ready to intercept. Only upon arrival she learnt that nothing was wrong at all: people were simply enjoying the show, the ballet proving an unlikely hit. Despite the stresses and mania of production, this seems like an incredibly satisfying transference: a festival which had existed in the anxious imagination of a curator now existing as a memory for the many assembled guests.
Latitude Festival runs from the 13th – 16th July at Henham Park, Southwold, Suffolk and tickets are available at http://www.latitudefestival.com/
Written by Sean Gilbert