If you’re excited by the monumental line-up for All Points East Festival in Victoria Park this May, then it’s Jim King you should maybe go and thank. He heads up the team putting the whole 10 day extravaganza together and we managed to grab him for literally 10 minutes before he dashed off to have more meetings.
Hey Jim, how’s it going? So what are your responsibilities with All Points East? Do all the bucks stop with you?
I’m lucky to work as part of a great event team at AEG who are all working super hard on making the first All Points East a success. I head up that team. It’s very much a team effort across all aspects of the event and I’ll play a role in most areas but primarily creative, production and artist bookings. Occasionally I’ll have to make a final decision but it’s only ever after having been presented with a number of great options.
Have you got a big countdown clock in your office adding pressure to you and your team every single day till May?
Pretty much. Never a moment goes by without something reminding me that there are less than 100 sleeps to go. The pressure is there but we’re lucky that we get to put our energy and efforts into something we love and are passionate about.
So why did you decide to run a festival over so many days? That sounds like a right headache…
Well the format of the event is something we’re used to at BST Hyde Park. It offers a multi-tiered offering for music lovers as well as delivering a free to access cultural hub for the community throughout the week.
How long have you been planning All Points East – some of the names you’ve got headlining must have taken lengthy negotiations…
Not as long as you’d think. We were awarded the contract last July, we then took our vision and presented that to the artist community and based on the great artists who have confirmed they seem to have liked it.
Are there any artists you’re particularly looking forward to seeing?
Way too many to list. I’m so lucky that I get to pick artists I love but I’d probably book LCD Soundsystem for every show I was involved in if I was allowed to. That said, there’s great combinations of acts every day, none more so than the national and the War On Drugs and who doesn’t love Future Islands?! Then there’s Nick Cave and Patti Smith and St Vincent. Bjork is so original it’s always spellbinding when she plays live and balanced with Father John Misty and Beck is another amazing day. There’s a couple of personal favourites about to join The xx as well so I’ll definitely be going missing from the event office for a few hours every day for sure.
All Points East runs from 25th May – 3rd June – find out more here
Interview: Josh Jones
Photo: Tom Medwell
