Great Britain’s UK Trade and Investment in collaboration with Audio Visuals Arts (AVA) Festival bring you The Exchange X AVA on 9th March at the Khar Social, Mumbai.
Founder of AVA Festival and UP Productions, Sarah McBriar spoke to us about the ‘The Exchange x AVA’ conference and how does India fit into the international music scene. Read our chat below.
Khushrav – Hi Sarah! Thanks for this interview. What are you expecting to take away from ‘The Exchange x AVA’ and what will you be focusing on during the conference?
Sarah – The Exchange x AVA is a new and exciting collaboration, with an aim to push forward Electronic music, develop new and exciting collaborations between artists, promoters and electronic music industry leaders, as well as an aim to develop both the scene at home and within India. The Exchange conference in December lead to our event happening tomorrow, it’s a clear indication of how new projects and collaborations can grow from such events, I think that will be the focus tomorrow – to start many more!
Khushrav – As founder of AVA festival & UP Productions, what are some of the challenges you have faced while setting up your festival?
Sarah – Starting an independant festival from scratch is difficult. It requires a lot of time, paitence and support. I have been fortunate to receive a lot of support from a number of very strong key partners within Northern Ireland, including Generator NI, Tourism Ireland, Belfast City Council, CET plus many more. The main challenges are booking talent and securing the right venue. In Belfast we get a lot of rain, not quite the same problem here in India, but yeah – it was important for me to secure a warehouse style venue that would cater for a large number of people. AVA Festival is in the stunning T13, an old industrial shipping warehouse on the docks of the titanic quarter. The harsh warehouse style venue with the electronic music and stunning digital visual arts is the right vibe for what we have tried to create. Check out our facebook https://www.facebook.com/avafestival/ and website for some images: www.avafestival.com
Khushrav – What is the direction ahead for electronic music in terms of the ‘India’ brand? How does it fit into the international music business scene?
Sarah – I think India has an exciting emerging underground scene. A lot of people in the UK forget that Mumbai’s population is 20 million, so ‘niche’ and ‘underground’ is still quite big. This excites me, so I would say we will see some exciting electronic underground producers and DJ’s emerging and this will have a strong impact on the international music scene.
Khushrav – Besides a passion for music, what does one need to succeed in the music business today?
Sarah – Passion, patience, belief, ability to take criticism and work it to your advantage, strength, thick skin and respect for those who have worked hard to get to where they are.
Khushrav – Would you mind sharing with us one of your short term and long term goals in relation with your projects/brand.
Sarah –
Short term goal – put on an amazing event in Mumbai (tomorrow) and a very successful AVA Festival in Belfast – www.avafestival.com and showcase at ADE this year.
Long term goal – grow AVA into an Audio, Visual, Arts Festival across the City of Belfast annually and an Event that travels internationally, showcasing some of the most exiciting emerging & established talent in electronic music and visual arts – we are making a really good start. Also to create an Audio Visual Arts experience that can’t be experienced anywhere else, that is truly unqiue.
Khushrav – Thanks Sarah! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts at the conference.
Event takes place today. More information, here.
Khushrav’s passion for dance music started early on as he began creating weekly podcast episodes of the latest electronic music across genres and has mixed over 200 episodes over a span of 5years. As a dance music enthusiast, Khushrav still keeps up to date with every week’s releases, contributing to THE’s Spotify playlists.
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