Yourcity slicker!
ROB FIDDAMAN TALKS TO YOURCITY ORGANISER BEN NIXON ABOUT HIS BIG IDEAS FOR THE FESTIVAL’S FUTURE...
THE idea for Yourcity Festival came about when Ben Nixon started promoting gigs about eight years ago.
He was playing various festivals around the UK and the one that stuck out for Ben was Soundcity Festival in Liverpool.
He said: “When we came back to Stoke-on-trent from playing Soundcity one year, I realised there was nothing like this going on here. I’m always looking for a gap in the market.
“I started on my own, I did all the planning then bit by bit I managed to get people onboard. The current state of the festival now is that I have Richard Hearn who runs all the music matters at Indie CIC. “He’s now my business partner on Yourcity. I met him a couple of years back. We see the same issues and we see the same solutions. We’ve got a great working relationship.”
The first festival was in 2017 and was spread across venues around the city.
Ben said: “We realised that model wasn’t going to work because obviously if you want to watch bands in the Sugarmill but the other bands are on at The Rigger then that’s not logistically possible. Well it is but you’re going to be spending a lot of money, right? “So we decided to put them all on in the city centre. From that first experience we’ve always recalibrated. We’ve looked at the model and found OK, this works, and this doesn’t.
“We’re finally getting there now and we had a majorly successful year this year.”
Since Yourcity first started they have hosted local bands. This year, however, they decided on national touring artists such as Hands Off Gretel who Ben has had an eye on for a while.
Touring artists is something they are going to look into more.
If they had the infrastructure in terms of venue capacity, which they will do eventually, they intend to get in bigger acts such as “Fontaines DC but you’d really need a venue capacity of two thousand really for that.” Yourcity have some exciting plans. They have developed relationships with local universities and have some interesting projects in mind. I asked Ben, who plays keys and synthesizer with Psyence, what he would like to see happening in North Staffordshire for bands and music in general. He said: “I’d like to see a lot more focus on networking. That is one of the primary focuses of Yourcity. We don’t want it to just be a festival. We want it to be a recognisable brand that is nurturing the music industry in Stoke on-trent. “We are also focusing on giving constructive criticism to bands – if they want to take it, of course. We want to give bands the tools to think of the band as a business. I think that’s the most important thing. We want to develop entrepreneurialism in artists. Being an artist isn’t enough.
“Every artist wants to make it but at the same time you’ve got to be realistic and know that your chance [of making it] is probably one in ten thousand so to have an entrepreneurial mind is key. That’s what I did when I first started promoting gigs and it has just evolved since then.”
Yourcity Festival sold out The Sugarmill last Friday with help from All The Young, Camens, Lissy Taylor and Ruby J. They raised £1,600 for North Staffs Mind, a charity for helping those with mental health issues.