VAULT Festival was founded in 2012 by Andy George, Tim Wilson and Mat Burt with the aim been to provide a fair and equal platform for emerging artists to showcase interesting and risky work. Andy, the festival co-director and production manager, comments, "Theatre can often be a very safe place where little risk is taken, largely due to commercial reasons. VAULT Festival is an opportunity to programme shows and acts that would normally be overlooked. With there being very little financial risk for the artists involved, it gives them a chance for their voices to be heard and for their work to be showcased."
WL's role at the festival is to supply the lighting to the main infrastructure along with the power and rigging. The company also offers its apprentices who work on site for a nine day build period.
Bryan Raven, WL's managing director, comments, "VAULT Festival is a fantastic celebration of up-and-coming talent that has rightfully grown over the years. It gives artists at the start of their career opportunities that simply aren't available elsewhere. We're delighted to be in a position to offer our support to such an organisation."
VAULT Festival is located beneath Waterloo Station and has 14 performance spaces, eight bars and a restaurant. Such was the magnitude of this year's programme that the festival had to expand to the nearby Morley College along with the community theatre space Network Theatre.
Tim Wilson, the festival's co-director, comments, "For this year's Festival, we received the highest ever number of applications ever. With such an exciting range of artists wanting to showcase their work, we felt it was right to amplify our offering and provide more space."
This year's festival features an immersive staging of The Great Gatsby, themed parties every Friday and Saturday night along with PROXIMA V, which is a carefully selected strand of sci-fi and space experiences.
Andy adds, "It's amazing to think that in 2012, the Festival ran for only three weeks and we had only 9,000 visitors (compared to the 40,000 in 2016). We have grown exponentially by offering both artists and theatre-goers a platform that previously wasn't there. We're extremely grateful to WL for their support throughout and fulfilling our technical requirements as we have continued to grow."
(Jim Evans)
