Dragon Interview: Tony Scott, GuilFest Organiser

Published on: 17 Jan, 2014
Updated on: 23 Sep, 2015

GuilFest’s Tony Scott – photo Timothy Holt ©

Guildford resident Tony Scott has been organising music festivals in the area for more than 20 years. He’s a businessman with his own marquee hire firm who is also passionate about music.

Starting in 1992 as the Guildford Folk & Blues Festival, it was originally a one-day event. In 1995 it was moved to Loseley Park and became a two-day festival with on-site camping. GuilFest returned to Stoke Park in 1996 and became a three-day festival in 1997.

Putting on outdoor events in the UK (especially rock and popular music) can be a risky business. His company Scotty Events Ltd went into liquidation after the 2012 event, due to poor ticket sales that year and in 2011, which, at the time Mr Scott blamed on poor weather, competition from other festivals and the London 2012 Olympic Games Torch Relay Event.

A previous company run by Mr Scott, Guildford Fusion Festival Ltd, which ran GuilFest from 1998 to 2001, went into liquidation in October 2001. Its demise was linked to the foot and mouth disease crisis that virtually ‘shut down’ the countryside resulting in marquee hire plummeting.

But Tony is a man who does not let setbacks get in the way of organising a music event. He aims to offer something for all age groups and tastes, and his style of festival is certainly loved by many. This week he was given another chance to put on GuilFest 2014, under a new business of his, Trowfest Ltd.

What is your reaction to Guildford Borough Council’s decision giving you a conditional green light to bring GuilFest back this summer?

Really, really pleased. I didn’t think that we were going to get it because the time had gone on for so long.

We originally had the meeting on October 10 with the full council. They indicated that we would know by the latest on December 31st. Then an application came in from the other bidder and suddenly it was back on again and they were like, ‘We’ve had another application in,’ and there were more questions again.

I just thought that because it was going on for so long that the council were really looking at the other application and not ours. So when the press conference was called, and we were not invited to it, I thought, ‘Well, the writing is on the wall and we haven’t got it.’

Then, only about twenty minutes before the press conference, we got a phone call from the the council officer in charge, James Whiteman [executive head of environment], who told me that we had got it. So we watched the webcast of the press conference which was quite intriguing.

So was it a celebration party last night?

No, I was still in shock!  I  knew I had to give a radio interview at ten past seven in the morning, so I thought I had better have an early night.

The hard work begins now?

Yeah, we have got six and a half months to put it all on. Put it this way, we have done it for 21 years, and, all right, we had a bit of a blip in 2012, but you know this is what we do – we put on GuilFest and it has evolved over the years. The timing is tight.

But you know, I am confident we can do it. I wouldn’t want to be doing it if I wasn’t, and we are just glad to be back doing it again. Everyone that has been involved in putting on GuilFest over the years is just really pleased. We have so much fun putting it on and watching it change and evolve each year that I am over the moon and so are lots of other people that are involved.

In October you said that the clock was already ticking.The less time you were given, the harder it would be to make all the arrangements and get a good line up.

Yeah, the wait will make it more difficult there is no doubt about it. But we have got to put it back on again now. If we missed out another year that could have killed it. We couldn’t wait until 2015. We could have lost a lot of our following and audience by then. If we didn’t do anything, and nothing happened, that would have been the end of it. We couldn’t restart it after that. It just wouldn’t happen.

Are you confident that you are going to be able to meet the conditions set out by the council?

Yes. We haven’t properly discussed them yet. We have only just seen them, including the £40,000 bond, payable in April and the staged payments for the hire fee of the park which is £25,000 in three stages, £7,000 in February and £9,000 in both March and April.

We have got to look again at our cash flow forecast because it has now changed. We have got to talk to Guildford Borough Council about those payments,  but in principal we want to put on GuilFest and we will have to look at the whole picture of it, which is what we are doing at the moment, and hopefully we will be talking to the council officers about it next week.

Have you got plans already to raise the necessary finance or are you going to have to start from scratch?

Well historically GuilFest has always funded itself. A lot of the money comes in from the concessions which includes: 34 caterers, traders, an alcohol concession and ice cream concessions. All these people bring in cash which funds the festival. We will start selling those concessions pretty quickly now to start raising the money.

And when we sit down with the council to discuss the arrangements we will have some questions for them too. For instance, we want confirmation that we will be the only event in Stoke Park this summer. In 2012 probably the biggest problem we had was the Olympic Torch Relay event.

It all sounded fine at the start but then they had Rizzle Kicks there, effectively a major event, attended by 28,000 people buying tickets at £1 each just days after ours. We think that that event had the biggest adverse impact on our ticket sales, although it is impossible to be certain, and, of course, it is no fault of anybody’s. There was also the weather, of course.

Will this year’s GuilFest be as big an event as previous GuilFests, or because you have got less time will you have to make it smaller?

We think it will be exactly the same size as it has been. That is our aim.

Do you have any acts in mind yet, or is it too early to say?

It is a bit too early to say. We have been checking things out, and even today I have approached one particular act, but we can’t really say at the moment, although I can say that we are looking at that?

But you are confident that you will have a good line-up?

Well, it depends on what you think a good line up is, That is completely subjective. We try to put something on for everyone. Sometimes it could be someone orbital [very famous] headlining, or it could be Jools Holland or it could be Pulp or the Australian Pink Floyd Show. And they are completely different acts.

What about the opportunities for local acts to get involved?

We have lots and lots of people performing at GuilFest including the Rock Choir, loads and loads of bands, lots and lots of amateur dramatics groups. Then we have got about seventy individual children’s entertainers. So there are lots of people involved, probably about 2,000 people altogether.

What would you say to people who might say, given that you have gone bust twice and after what happened in 2012, leaving the council and police with unsettled debts, you shouldn’t be given another chance?

What I would say is, putting on these festivals is a very risky businesses which I did not fully appreciate when we started putting them on 22 years ago. For the first ten years GuilFest cost me money, I made a loss, but we pushed it through. But Michael Eavis, who runs Glastonbury, came to GuilFest one year and told me that it took them eleven years to break even. It is a tough thing to make these events work, but you have got to keep going.

At the end of the day, Guildford Borough Council have made a lot of money from GuilFest. If you add up all the fees we have paid – for instance, the licence fees, the fees for the park – they far outweigh what it cost them in 2012. Otherwise we have always paid them in full. This was highlighted at the council meeting in October.

It was worked out that we had paid the borough council over £200,000, over the years. But also, think how much money have we brought into Guildford from the amount visitors are spending. On average they probably spend £200 to £300 each, over the weekend. Can the same be said about any other arts event over the years? And we get no subsidy.

If you looked at it as a balance sheet the credits massively outweigh the debits.

Is there anything you would like to add?

Yes, we are local people who come from Guildford and the team are really excited about putting this on and we are hoping to put on the best GuilFest ever this summer.

GuilFest is a unique example of a festival that is put on by local people. Most people that come now are from Guildford and the surrounding areas, Woking Godalming, Farnham… Where else is there anything like that in this country?

See also: GuilFest To Return This Summer – But Only If Conditions Can Be Met

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