Art has a message, it may be trivial or important, and what decides this is the audience.

There are ways of engaging an audience - sensational or subtle, it doesn't matter. What makes great art is the emotion felt by the audience.

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Art is about discovering things you did not see before. All these ideas in art - these words, images, objects, film - are a way of looking at our world.

We choose our way, and art helps us make that choice.

Art has, in its expression, values, beliefs, stories, metaphors, symbols, ways of thinking.

As a way of thinking, it provides us with a vocabulary to do so. It's a vocabulary that we use to be part of a group. We need to have a similar vocabulary to share with others. Our experiences change as art adds new words and ideas to our existing vocabulary.

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Art is about the way people see their world. People see beauty in one thing, truth in another. It took a poet to realise they are one and the same thing:

Beauty Is Truth, Truth Beauty. That is all
Ye Know on Earth, and All Ye Need to Know

(The last two lines in Ode To A Grecian Urn, by John Keats)

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Why London Bridge? It is the old and the new London, a London that has a heart and a character. It's easy to talk about, to visit, to walk through, to enjoy, to spend time in. The people are diverse, styles are numerous, history is everywhere. There are arches, cobbled streets, new buildings, cafés, restaurants, pubs, courtyards, street views, river views, birds-eye views, run-down warehouses, shopping centres, a bus station, train stations, the river bus, dog-and-duck tours, theatres, horror stories, Shakespeare. This is the area Dickens wrote about. And so did Chaucer and Johnson and Marlowe. There are people living, working, visiting; thousands of tourists each day, even more thousands of commuters. They walk past Cross Bones graveyard, the only unconsecrated graveyard in the country - a plot of ground that was set aside four hundred years ago to bury 'single women' - a euphemism for prostitutes. They were called 'Winchester Geese' because they were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester. Perhaps, some of them were buried with dignity.

London Bridge was known for its brothels and theatres, as well as bull and bear baiting, activities not permitted across the river in the City itself. It's the bridge that was sold to the Americans, the one in the film, Mary Poppins, and the one that desperately needs to be redesigned for the 21st Century. It's a fine place to be and a great place to be entertained.

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A Festival is a marketing device. Its aim is to provide the artists and performers with an audience.

In a Festival, the promoter wants to make money, the artist wants to perform, and the audience wants to be entertained.

A Festival should show and celebrate the diversity of the human experience.

This Festival is a platform for many people to come together to provide art and entertainment.

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What do we want to achieve? It's simple: to enable as many people as possible to perform or show their art.

What are the guiding principles?

• To connect people so they come together and share their experiences.
• To welcome all contributions. Everything that is done, however small, is a valuable contribution to the whole.
• Transparency. Everything we do is seen by people. Our ideas and actions made visible somewhere.

What do audiences pay for? Experiences.

What remains of a performance? Memories are what the audience take away with them.

Where will it go to? The Festival should establish itself as a key event in the cultural calendar of London. Maybe, by the year 2012, people will look at it as a tourist destination.

Has it taken off? Right now, there are a few key promoters who are using the Festival to bring in headline acts and new audiences, and a lot of people interested in doing something. It's building up.

What does a Festival really do? Make connections between people. It's doing that now in the build-up to the Festival, and will be doing that at the events, when performers have an audience, or an exhibition has its viewers.

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The Festival is about people sharing experiences. We make that easy for people to do.

The Festival Club is where people go to do just that. It's where they meet other artists and performers. It works because something always comes out of the evening. If it's just contacts, or ideas, or projects, people go away with something.

The first club was on 19 January 09, and we've had one every two weeks since then. They have grown into an evening of ideas and fun. What works at the event is when people are introduced to each other. There is then a give-and-take, a meeting of minds, the sharing of ideas. This is the most important part of the evening - when people meet each other.

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An important aspect of running this Festival is communicating what's going on. People need to see activity in the build-up to the Festival. They need to see art and performance events being worked on.

In other words, we needed to be convincing right from the start.

The website and the offline activities have been designed to do this - daily. The activities both online and off have been set up to get the story out to people.

Several news items that promote participants are posted online each day. We also have a list of current artists and performers on the front page of the site.

Again, from the beginning, we realised that people needed a space, and a connection to something, to encourage them to make a contribution to the Festival. We needed to provide a way for people to do as much as they wished. We try to create a space for them in a group that's getting larger almost every day.

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People are sometimes unsure about getting involved. One reason is that they need finance to put on an act or show, and if there isn't any available then it's difficult for them to take part.

But, we welcome any contribution. We found that almost everyone who is interested can contribute in a small way. All we need is to find a way for them to do so. We've been helped by many people who have contributed in small ways, and quite a few who helped in big ways.

What seems to make them want to contribute is a simple idea. That the Festival is a way to share and connect with others. The result of this has been the goodwill and the efforts of many people.

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A few people have asked what the strategy is for the Festival. A strategy, at its simplest, is a way to take you from where you are now, to where you want to be after a specified time has passed. A strategy usually has a plan, a sequence of steps to take you to where you want to go.

A strategy can also be as simple as a certain approach to the project. In the Festival, there is no overall strategy, but there is a fundamental approach.

The way to a successful Festival is to involve as many people as possible. To talk to people, to tell them what they can do. To help in every way possible.

Although there is no step-by-step plan to the running of the Festival, there is now a communications plan with detailed steps on getting to the press.

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What's it like right now? It's basically a lot of people who come together and talk, with various networking and promotional events going on.

What people want is a space to create, and people to create with. It's connections, conversations, a channel for their ambitions, for their ideas.

People seem to have the same reason for wanting to be part of it. They feel part of a group that is working towards something.

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Heck, the above is all words. In the end it's what people do that matters. The Festival has already been worth it if you look at all the people who have come together to share their time and ideas.

It has already been useful to a lot of people, and will be to more and more. From this, we can grow.

END

(c) Greg Tallent 10 June 2009