|
 |
You are > Home > Sweeping changes to breathe life into loss making festival
|
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Sweeping changes to breathe life into loss making festival
By Marion O’Mara
THE Executive of the outdated, loss making Waterford International Festival of Light Opera (WIFLO) has been cut by more than half and volunteers are to be replaced by handpicked individuals including some with expertise in the areas of marketing and finance.
These were among the key changes put forward by City Manager, Michael Walsh, and unanimously adopted, at an Extraordinary General Meeting of WIFLO held in the Tower Hotel last Wednesday, in a bid to keep the festival alive.
The 50th competitive event will go ahead at the new look Theatre Royal from November 4 to 13 but the format will be radically different from previous years.
It is proposed that the festival will be staged over two long weekends with fringe events bridging the gaps between the competitive shows.
Seed capital of €60,000 has been set aside to get the 50th festival to the stage and virtually all of that will come from the City Council and Fáilte Ireland.
“What we have to do is move the festival on in a sustainable fashion and if we cannot do that there is no plan B,” Mr. Walsh said.
With patrons voting with their feet to stay away and societies doing the same because of the high costs involved in bringing shows to Waterford the city manager said the whole organisation and the festival itself would have to change.
“We are in a completely different place now than we were 50 years ago and doing the same thing but expecting different results is not a runner — that is Einstein’s definition of insanity.”
The City Manager outlined seven key areas of change and improvement. There would, he said, have to be a marriage of commercial acumen and artistic interest and above all the current structure of 17 board members would have to be cut.
“It is too unwieldy, unfocussed and nearly impossible to manage,” he told the 30 WILFO members who attended the EGM.
Mr. Walsh said even the biggest companies in the country were run by a board of six to eight people.
The brand, he said, had to be re-energised and re-driven and the festival would have to become an event where groups wanted to be.
PROFESSIONALISM
To bring that about there would have to be professionalism in all aspects of the festival, there would have to be a complete change of psychology and a turnover of board personnel on a regular basis.
In addition to that decisions would have to be based on robust analysis and the head would have to rule and not the heart, he said.
On the eight-person board he suggested that he nominate the chairperson and treasurer, the secretary be nominated by the Theatre Royal Society and the five directors be recommended from the current board.
Each of these people would be from key areas of expertise from finance to sponsorship product, marketing, event and artistic management.
There will also continue to be an involvement by those with a long voluntary association with WIFLO and others who will be working to support the directors.
Change had to be brought about, Mr. Walsh said, because it no longer had an appeal for younger audiences, sponsorship had declined, money was being lost and WIFLO was running out of cash flow.
Paying tribute to the former Executive Committee for steering the International Festival of Light Opera for 49 years, he said that an amateur organisation had been working tirelessly through a time where professional demands were ever increasing.
He also highlighted how the City Council had been doing its bit for the arts in Waterford and he highlighted how the local authority was providing the second highest spend on the arts, per capita, in the country.
“The Council makes money available to the arts but there are standards that have to be achieved and we have to ensure that there is a return on the investment,” he said.
Recommending that major changes be endorsed by the membership he warned, “a new start has to happen or WIFLO will have no future.”
By a show of hands the recommendations outlined by Mr. Walsh were unanimously adopted.
The five new board members approved at the EGM were Geraldine O’Shea, Billy Sharpe, Linda O’Kane, Kevin O’Carroll and Fergal Blanchfield.
Main News Page |
Previous Page
|
|
|
|
