A bakery and a residency for international artists form part of diversification plans from the Green Man Festival that aims to generate an additional £13m boost to the economy.
Green Man, which has been held in Powys for nearly 20 years and which is one the last remaining large independently-owned festivals in the UK, is planning a series of new projects at a 240-acre farm near to its existing leased festival site on the Glanusk Estate.
While the Welsh Government’s acquisition of Gilestone Farm has faced criticism, Green Man chief executive Fiona Stewart said that under a yet-to-be-signed-off lease agreement, the diversification of Green Man would create not just new business activities but much-needed jobs and training opportunities.
While the Welsh Government has been questioned for acquiring Gilestone Farm for £4.25m without sign-off on the detailed business case for Green Man’s expansion, it shouldn’t be seen as an unusual government policy intervention.
Public administrations often acquire land and property assets before being able to confirm new tenants. For example, the Welsh Government acquired the freehold interest in the former Nippon Glass factory in Cardiff Bay, which allowed the then start-up in independent high-end television and film production firm, Bad Wolf, to take occupancy.
Though the majority of the firm is now owned by Sony Pictures Television, it continues to expand in Wales.
However, just because Green Man has been a successful live music venue – with an educational and cultural element too – it doesn’t necessarily mean any new projects at the farm site will be.
Each project will also require funding to become operational, with the question of where the finance will come from. - though Ms Stewart is focused on self-financing. And if both parties walked away from a lease deal, the Welsh Government would have to reconsider its plans for the farm, and if it then decided to sell, would it recoup what it paid for it?
However, Ms Stewart is taking a positive, practical and long-term approach, seeing many of the projects as a natural progression of the festival’s current offer and exploiting the business knowledge and expertise built up over the past two decades.
On where the process currently is, she said she couldn’t give any specific details around the term of the lease and the annual rent for Gilestone Farm with the Welsh Government.
That will be subject to the ongoing scrutiny of the diversification business plan across Welsh Government departments.
She said: “The rent will be based on what my offer is and it is all going through scrutiny at the moment with the business plan. It is very different from a normal business plan, as we are not only looking at economic but social and environmental obligations as well.
“So we are in the midst of that, but before any of this happened we wrote a very extensive vision document which fulfilled financial targets and showed evidence of the influence of the brand, which triggered all of this off, which we circulated to the Welsh Government and Powys Council.
“That was about six months before any of this happened (the Welsh Government farm acquisition). It is not like moving into an office as with a farm there are things you can and cannot do. I think the dateline for us will probably be the autumn and then there will be another year after to develop things. We are talking about a long-term project and we want to do it right. So, it is going to take a bit of time to get things up and running as ultimately it is a farm and it will take time to develop these projects.”
She was able to share headline economic impact figures.
Ms Stewart said: “My objective would be that everything we do with Green Man in year six will see an economic impact of £23m, 38-full time equivalent jobs and indirectly supporting 300 Welsh jobs in the wider economy.”
To put that into context, the festival currently has an annual economic impact of £10m.
Ms Stewart added: “Our view is that we cannot rest on our laurels and we have to find new talent, innovations and ways of working.
“We have a history of doing that and I work with very clever and talented people and have for more than a decade been promoting food and beverage, engaging with clients, training and everything in culture as well.
“So, we are not reinventing anything, but building on the successes we already have and moving them forward... but I think the big thing behind that is the influence of the brand and that is the driving force.
“So, if I can diversify the business to other ventures, then I am not so reliant on Green Man. And we then have assets and a more understandable business model if I want to move things forward... and the added bonus that we are creating jobs and opportunities for people in Wales.”
On some of the projects being proposed she said: “A bakery is being discussed and we would like to have a village site to develop alcohol.
“We would also have a main area where we could look at white labelling goods. So, we would be working with other organisations in Wales which wanted an uplift from being associated with Green Man.”
On all projects she is open to different operational models, whether effectively licensed out to third parties or done in-house.
But what sort of bakery does she envisage, and importantly, what would its customer base be?
She said: “There are some incredible restaurants and fantastic food opportunities in the area so it would be great if we could start or add to that
“It is more about developing partnership outside of that as well.
“None of these things would be called Green Man, but they would all be related in some way. And certainly on white labelling there would be a kind of stamp on the standards we would expect.
As an indigenous family-run SME, Ms Stewart is acutely aware of the importance of such enterprises to the Welsh economy.
She said: “What I am very committed to is trying to bring jobs, and good jobs, to young people in rural areas, which we have done with Green Man.
“In Powys poverty is 18% greater than the UK and there is an older population. There is nothing wrong with that (older demographic), but we are getting people who see no future for their children in the area.
“That is not how it used to be in rural Wales, which was one thriving with lots of shops, commerce and opportunities.
“Of course, you cannot have this old-fashioned idea of what things used to be, but you can change it to look at some of the new emerging businesses, especially those to do with wellness, food and beverage, high-end tourism and regenerative farming. There are lots of opportunities to develop these, which I think is really exciting.
“What we would also like to do is open up Gilestone Farm so that we could have a number of different organisations farming it or growing food or produce.
“We would have a farm manager and at least two new entrants of farmers, but looking at other organisations, particularly in food growing, which is a big thing for us.”
She also envisages a cultural hub at the farm, which currently has a number of buildings including the farmhouse. Ms Stewart said: “I am talking to the British Council about bringing quite significant artists from outside of the UK who would stay at the farm for a good period of time and engage with Welsh artists.
“This would be a much greener way, so rather than sending loads of people over to other countries, you could have one significant artist coming to Wales. This is very much an old-fashioned idea of having an artist stay in an area for a period of time and producing art work from sculpture to film.”
While unable to give specific details, she said the farm project would also seek to champion training opportunities for young people.
She said: “I am a massive supporter of the older style of apprenticeships where working people were respected for a practical qualification.
“Sometimes when you do a business like ours, you can work with young people who feel disenfranchised and uninvested.
“However, the environment that we create is one where they become excited because of the sort of things that we do.
“We have worked with young people who might not have had the best start in life and because they are suddenly working with a plumber or a security manager at a festival it becomes very interesting. We want to encourage those kinds of courses as well and it is not all about the arts.”
On funding needed to take projects forward, she has seemingly ruled out funding from the Mid Wales Growth Deal, where Ms Stewart served until last year as chair of its economic strategy group.
She added: “I think they have already committed to projects and not this. Certainly on the philanthropic side we would be looking for funding in the same way that anyone would.
“They are art-relevant opportunities, but the expectation is that I find the money to start these things off. In time we would be allowed to apply for funding from anyone, as any Welsh business can.
“Everything to date, in the development, I have financed myself. We have not had a permanent base in Wales to get those partnerships going and what we are talking about I am hoping will make it much easier with the reality that we are doing things 365 days a year, rather than something for seven days and then disappearing again.
“Green Man is seen in the wider world as an influential brand and we use that to promote talent, ideas about science and new thinking around wellness as well. I just wanted to harness that in a way that we can start white-labelling the good things in Wales, as well as producing our own goods.”
She said the festival had a proven track record in food and drink. She added: “With Growler, the beer we have every year at the festival, we can use one Welsh independent beer company or another. However, whichever one we use, Growler always out sells everything that we have. It has become a success story in itself.”
Selling Green Man
She said the festival, with Green Man being one of Wales’ best-known brands, continues to attract interest from would-be acquirers.
She said: “I have received offers to buy Green Man since 2011. However, we are a family business. My son works with me and the people I work with are like my family and they love Wales.
“If it was sold to say a big corporate they would be responsible to their shareholders, but for an independent business like ours the responsibility is to the people who work for us and the audience. It is a completely different ethos.”
The chief executive said any corporate acquirer wouldn’t have an emotional commitment to keeping the festival in Wales, but be driven by profit maximisation.
She added: “From their point of view it could be moved somewhere bigger, and by putting in sponsorship (which Green Man doesn’t do) it is going to make a great deal of money.
“It would be a different event and maybe it would only last eight or 10 years, as events like that usually do, but they would make an enormous amount of money out of it in that period of time. I am aware of that (financial windfall from selling), but it is the choice I am making.”
Asked why she didn’t seek to raise debt to acquire Gilestone Farm herself, she said: “I couldn’t afford to, but what I initially thought was that I could have acquired it gradually.
“However, the Welsh Government didn’t want me to do that. It would have been a much better investment for me, but that wasn’t the case.”
She does, though, have an option to acquire the farm at a commercial rate from the Welsh Government at a future point.
This year’s Green Man Festival she described as a “monumental success.” She added: “We were at full capacity (25,000 a day) last year and again this year, having sold out last September in just three days.
“We had a 6.8 billion media reach at the last count, based on an algorithm chances-to-be-seen analysis.
"It is very wide ranging, not just music and culture, but business, tourism, education, science and food and beverage. We get articles across the whole sphere of that. The big thing is that we sell out before anything is announced.”
She also confirmed that Green Man is in discussions over extending its festival lease with the Glanusk Estate beyond the current agreement to 2030.
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