Positive Emotions

Interview with Mikołaj Ziółkowski, director of the Alter Art agency

What is the recipe for the festival’s success? Open’er is already a trendy place to be, it wouldn’t do not be there… How do you feel as organiser of the Polish Roskilde?

The recipe for the festival’s success is the concept behind it and consistency in its realization, many years of work, the best team, knowledge and also passion. Festivals should be in the blood. But the truth is that, in order for a festival to be continually fashionable, it must have an extra “something.” We have this.
What do I feel? Great joy and pride that we’ve made a success of it. Me, my team and above all – the festival’s public.

In Poland, Alter Art is in fact establishing a holiday music calendar: Selector in June, Open’er in July and Coke Live at the end of August. The programme, finances, logistics – what this year has required the most work?

The organisation of this type of musical event is very complicated and requires a huge mobilising effort, a great deal of work and many years of experience. Without a doubt, this year is also special due to the global crisis and generally difficult financial situation. But we, when planning our festivals, think about them in terms of several years, not events that happen once a year and this is how we make preparations for them. We organise the financial aspect and logistics years in advance. It’s difficult to say which requires more work. It is an unrelenting, very demanding process.

At a similar time to Open’er, at the beginning of July, in Europe many festivals take place, like Eurockéennes in Belfort in France or the Danish Roskilde mentioned earlier. Some competition…how do you manage to attract such stars and crowds of people to Poland?

This rivalry is always extremely difficult to deal with, but this year has shown that we are able to emerge victorious. Out of the festivals that you have mentioned, we had the largest attendance and the programme aroused huge, positive emotions over the whole of Europe. And how did we manage this… I’ve already spoken of our recipe.

The electronic Selector, alternative Open’er, pop Coke Live. The differences between these events appears to be quite fluid: will they continue to have aspects in common? Or are the principles determining the creation of their programmes strictly demarcated?

Festivals emanate music and in music, as in art, there are no rigid divisions and barriers. Musical styles merge. But I can promise that the festivals will show what in music is most important at a given moment, while at the same time upholding their basic musical parameters. However a festival is supposed to offer as far as possible musical experiences to those who attend. In this aspect we are as far away as we can be from musical orthodoxy – and we are never afraid of changes.

Open’er continues to be the biggest of your events and Coke Live also already has a fixed format. How do you judge the potential and scope for success of the youngest of these festivals – Selector?

We’re very satisfied with this year’s Selector Festival. The first edition was actually a great success on all levels: artistic, in terms of attendance and organisational. I am convinced that this event has an excellent future before it. We, the organisers – and  also, I think, the public – greatly enjoyed it.

And Selector and Coke Live have found there place here: why precisely here?

Our events are brilliantly becoming part of Kraków’s long term strategy as a city of culture – and working relations with the city authorities and their method of organising culture are from our perspective very good here. Besides this, Kraków of course forms part of the assumptions we make about the functioning of this type of event, such factors as: demography, logistics, the amount of tourists, the popularity of the city over the world…

What are you most satisfied with regarding this year’s Coke Live festival?

The strength of Coke Live is its unique musical character. There is no other event in Poland which would be able to present the best and most interesting things happening in the modern world of popular music on such a scale.