Cloud 9 Festival is a small but perfectly formed one day festival that brightens up south Cheshire in August. As well as bringing some pretty cool bands to the good people of the shire, it also does a lot to promote good causes. We caught up with festival organisers Hannah and Gina to get the lowdown and to get a bit of an insight into what it takes to put on a festival.
R13: So how did the festival come about?
H: It was set up by a local farmer who needed to find an additional income so he set up Cloud 9 and had about 800 people come in the first year. Last year was their second year and they moved sites to Love Farm in Cheshire, expecting around the same number of people to turn up and had 2500! As a result of that they decided they wanted to bring in a management company to manage it for them although they have had a lot of input on the line up and they retain the overall say on what goes on.
R13: How are the pre-sales looking?
H: We're expecting 5000 people this year (which is what the licence is for). Since pre-sales started we've already exceeded last year and a lot of that is down to the fact that we've got named bands this year, The Futureheads, Sunshine Underground, Ed Sheeran and so on.
R13: You mentioned some of the bigger bands there, not bad for a small festival!
H: Yeah The Futureheads and Sunshine Underground were already booked when we came on board and then we booked Scratch Perverts and Ed Sheeran. We've gone much further afield this year with coverage as well, prime example being you coming down to interview us. In the last two years I think the only press they had was in the Crewe Chronicle but they got 2500 people from that! I think this year we're pulling people in from further afield and they wouldn't come if it was just local bands.
G: And the fact that it's just one day means that they can go home on Sunday and recover in time for work on Monday!
R13: You mentioned that it was set up as an additional income stream but there is also a big charity part to the festival as well, was that a major point from the owners point of view?
H: Well I'm always in the mindset that if you're going to put on something that's going to go out to so many people and you can do something to raise awareness for a charity then it's a fantastic way to do it through music. So one of the first suggestions we had was to bring a charity on board that was close to everyone's heart that was working on the festival and that was CALM and Headculture who do a lot of work tackling the issue of male suicide, particularly in the under 35s. I met the guys that run it and they're very passionate about what they do and I felt that if we could raise awareness and raise money so they can do their job better then that's a great opportunity that we didn't want to miss out on.
G: They've both been massively involved in setting up the festival as well, it's not just a case of sticking their logo on everything. They both have tents on the site and are much more involved in it than a normal festival.
R13: In terms of fundraising for them is it a percentage of ticket sales or fundraising they do on the day?
H: Fundraising will be on the day but their main role will be raising awareness so they're going to have loads of volunteers there offering support and advice and making it approachable so that anyone at the festival with any problems can go and talk to someone in those tents. We'll be giving them a percentage of all the Festibarrow money that we make (transporting people's gear from the car parks to the camp site), any artists guests, their money goes to the charity, so potentially if we can sell 5000 tickets for the day then it's a huge amount of money we can raise.
G: It's not just about the money though it's more about raising awareness so that even if people don't want to talk to them on the day they know that when they go home they can still access that service.
H: Yeah, even if it helps just one person who goes home and goes on the CALM website and gets some help then it's been worthwhile and we've done our job. It was a conscious decision that all our headliners were men as well and they're all really supportive of the charities.
R13: As well as the music you've quite a lot of other things going on, tell us about that.
H: Well we're all ages for the first time this year, which was a bit of a change and you realise that young kids probably don't want to stand and watch bands all day! So especially in the Headculture tent and the Eskimo Mojito tent there's lots of stuff going on that isn't music, there's games and face painting and loads of stuff that kids can be doing whilst their parents are watching bands. There are areas that other festivals perhaps don't think about, like chill out areas where there's nothing going on but it's a place where kids can go and just wind down when they've had too much sugar!
G: Yeah we've really listened to what the people coming to the festival have wanted and Facebook has been really useful in that. For instance somebody asked whether there was a covered area in family camping where their kids could go if it was raining and we thought yeah, we can do that.
H: We've made it as family friendly as we can and a lot of people were asking us about that so we've made it free for under 10s as we want to make sure that if you've never taken your kids to a festival before and they hate it then you haven't had the extra cost of taking them and feeling it's been wasted.
R13: What price have you pitched the tickets at then?
H: It's ridiculously cheap this year! We would say that but it is! It's £30 and that's for fifteen hours of live music! Teenagers we're doing tickets for £18.50 and we thought that would be a good one so if it's their first festival the parents can go as well and they can leave them for a bit to go and hang out with their friends knowing that it's a safe environment. We want to keep the price low, we're not trying to turn this into Glastonbury, it's always going to be a small festival and it's always going to be a reasonable price. The reason everyone is struggling is because the festival market is saturated and a lot of festivals tend to forget who their original audience were and that's something we're trying to avoid. The fact that it's one day helps as well.
R13: Were there constraints on that in terms of the licensing?
H: No we have a licence for the Sunday as well but we didn't want to run before we could walk. We were also aware that there were lots of things we wanted to do that hadn't been done here before, so we thought if we make it one day and people come and have a fantastic time then we've got the potential to extend it to two or three days. It's never going to grow to 50,000 people though, we don't want that and I'd probably have a nervous breakdown!
We wanted to take all the things that we've learnt from working on festivals in the past, and all the things we hated about them and to try and avoid that happening. Also we're lucky that we haven't got a huge corporate sponsor, which means we can make those decisions independently.
R13: Having said that I assume you've sorted out luxury toilets then?
H: Haha no I'm afraid not and we haven't got showers, which I guess for the general public is no big deal but we're there for a week!
G: I'm not sure anyone will want to meet us on the day! Haha
H: We're a work in progress though so any feedback that does come through about how things can be improved for next year is welcome.
R13: What are you most looking forward to at the festival this year?
H: We're really looking forward to all the headliners but what I'm most excited about is that we've still got a lot of local bands on. Half of the line up is local bands and I think a lot of festivals lose that when they get bigger.
R13: OK sum up in one sentence why people should come this year?
H: It'll be the best £30 you've ever spent!
Cloud 9 festival takes place on the 6th August, full details can be found here.