In Conversation with the Brain Behind Brainchild: Marina Blake

I've been sitting here trying to think of different ways to describe my five extraordinary days at Brainchild festival last year and I just end up feeling like a blushing teenager sitting opposite the boy she fancies unable to get a single, coherent sentence out. I think I'll take the easy option and leave the explaning to the expert, the festival creator Marina Blake. After popping my Brainchild cherry and subsequently (as it always goes) falling head-over-heels in love with it, I tracked Marina down like a demented fan and demanded we meet up to discuss my new-found love. So here we are, sat on a rather noisy, single-decker P12 bus on our way to Peckham Rye in the rush hour... naturally.

Photo credit: FikayoAdebajo

How would you describe Brainchild & how does it differ from other festivals?

I’d say there’s a difference in the way that people listen at Brainchild. It started out as just a group of people who came together to listen and support each other. The space itself is all about finding the right people and confidence to make ideas happen and take things to the next level, and that’s exactly what I want the festival to be and hopefully what it feels like to others.

You started Brainchild when you were 19. Did you plan for it to be an annual thing or was the goal just short-term to start with?

The project didn’t really begin as a festival. Obviously we'd been influenced by attending things like Glastonbury in the past and had been inspired by that but it wasn’t like there was a need to jump into the festival market. The origins of the idea were just about everybody doing their thing and thinking about what kind of celebratory event we could make where everyone could participate; where people could DJ, do lights, do illustration if that’s what they were into… basically where they could just find a platform for what they got up to and share that with the people they knew and loved. I think that naturally trying to facilitate any large outdoor event, you have to strap on a lot of the measures that you would have in a large festival and then you’re trying to communicate what it is and I suppose it fell into that category, but yeah really it was just about platforming and connecting people.

Take us back to the first ever Brainchild. What was it like?

That year was just total carnage. We got to site and obviously hadn’t sorted out any food for ourselves, so I remember stupid stuff like turning up with the food you would bring to go to a festival (hardly anything), so I remember Izzy, a girl who set it up with me, her mum dropped us off in a blue convertible and then realised we had no food so ordered heaps of pizza to the site that evening... We were very underprepared and somehow managed to get away with murder. I can’t believe we got away with what we did.

How many artists did you have at the first one?

It was always big, we went out all guns blazing in a way. We had the forum, the brain stage, the shack and installations, so much like we do now-

This was even the first year that you had these?

Yep, I mean they were thin on the ground, but yeah a full programme. Lots of musicians, lots of poetry, workshops and talks, but nothing on the scale that you see now.

So there have been 6 festivals so far…

The first two were more experiments than anything else, I would say. They were both in different places and we really had no idea what we were doing. It was terrifying and not many people came…! The first year we sold 150 tickets, then 300 the next year, but I would say the ones from being at Bentley (fields surrounding the Bentley Wildfowl and Motorhome Museum) feel like the real Brainchild festival.

Why did you pick Bentley?

It’s very difficult to find space in the countryside where people are going to take a punt on you as a group of young people trying to put on something that’s typically very loud and disruptive to a local environment, so it was quite rare to find someone who was game, and also to find somewhere affordable, and they just were! We also wanted it to be near London as that’s where most of our creative community is. Yeah, they loved us and we loved them…and their mini train.

What’s your process with scouting artists? Did it start off with just mates of yours playing or did you hunt down musicians you were fans of?

It’s been very, very community driven. I knew the guys that started a night called Steez, which was hugely influential in forming a lot of the bands that are now doing really well and have played Brainchild for a long time, and that was sort-of my introduction to the South-East and the sounds that were coming out of Trinity Laban and Goldsmiths. So, really I knew these people via Steez, or friends, or just growing up… like a web. I suppose when it came to anything bigger, like King Krule playing, his brother used to be in a band that played the first year, and that brother now plays in Horsey… so yeah hugely community driven.

It doesn’t sound like you have much grafting to do in the scouting process!

I mean, to be real with you, our artistic budget in 2015 was £7,000. When you consider that’s like a single fee for a single artist in some cases, it’s kind of crazy. So, it literally happened on a shoe string and people just wanted to help each other out and be a part of something that wasn’t just a corporate, clean, over-priced offering.

How will you ensure that the authenticity of the festival doesn’t become saturated with too-cool raver types?

That’s the biggest concern, for sure. I mean we are kind of at a point right now where we are having to make those kind of decisions... we haven’t even worked out what those decisions are, but we are writing a business plan and obviously there are things we want to achieve in the future, so we are just trying to work out the costs and how we will make ends meet. I know for a fact that’s going to mean looking at different options of increasing ticket price or increasing size or subsidy. But yeah, my number one concern is making sure we manage growth right. What I will also say to that though is that it is something that we’ve been doing for years. Every year it’s exactly the same, trying to make sure that we have a very real, friendly and informal relationship with everyone that comes or the artists we work with. We don’t want to feel like a baby institution, we want to feel like a really relateable group of people, no matter how big we get. So that’s genuinely always a mission, each year. We won't do the festival if we think it’s being compromised, you know? We will just end it.

One of the things that stood out for me the most was the level of respect that everyone had for each other. No matter if you’re a volunteer, an artist or a punter.

I think the people who are at the event are what make the event what it is. You can do all the programming you want but ultimately it’s who is there and how we treat each other. In terms of respecting each other and the environment it’s definitely improved over the years, from when it was just a ramshackle, and I think that’s because as something builds up a reputation people come to the event with an energy to maintain that and protect that, so fingers fucking crossed and touch all the wood available that will continue to happen and we will do even more to communicate our values.

So Brainchild has always been volunteer led and this year you got a grant from the Art’s Council which means that's no longer the case. What aspects to the festival do you think this will change?

In terms of being volunteer-led, I think it’s definitely set out the intention of Brainchild as something that’s about the people and the experience and what we want people to come away feeling and not about anything else, not about money. But I also feel like the identity of Brainchild has transcended it’s volunteer magic dust. For a long time I was very scared of what would happen if I took that line away from it but nothing has changed. Nothing about what we offer or bring to the space or celebrate is changing at all, we are just doing it for our jobs instead of literally working 6 other jobs to be able to do it, which is the difference between it existing or not existing, and also the difference between it progressing and improving! It’s been like 7 years of unpaid work from dozens and dozens of people and I think the main thing wasn’t even about money, that was never the motivator, but we got to a point that we couldn’t guarantee that it would be the standard we wanted it to be, so was much more about protecting it from getting crap than it was about getting paid.

Are you still aiming to keep it as a platform for up and coming artists or are you going to start contracting more well-known performers?

I think it will stay at the level it did last year. We want to continue involving exciting and experienced artists like Shanti Celeste and Shabaka Hutchings because they can influence the programme and meet emerging artists and meet audience members in a really exciting way. It also usually means that those people are really well intentioned because they do it for much less than their normal rates, but we won't have any more than that every year. There will be a couple of lead artists who are well known and then mostly, yeah mostly emerging talent. We are in a really unique position where people want to come regardless of the names and that's something to be celebrated and means we can book exciting people and not worry about it.

If this hasn't convinced you to get involved, I don't know what will.

So trust me, take a punt, get your ticket. I guarantee you will not regret it.

Get your tickets for this year here: https://brainchildfestival.co.uk

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