01 Jul 2017
Licola, the current home of The Town, first got on our radar when someone sharing an office with us told us of this beautiful secret location.
We organised a meeting but Licola made it quite clear they had a really bad experience with a festival 10 years earlier and vowed never to do another one. We told them about The Town, and explained how it was different, but they suggested pitching a smaller concept and seeing how that went. We considered it, but the time wasn’t right.
A year later it became apparent we couldn’t use our Charnwood site anymore, as the venue restrictions on numbers were making it unsustainable financially, and left no room for creative growth. We contacted Licola again, and they said they were open to another chat. We prepared every reference we had, explained everything with complete honesty, and then finally called the manager.
He was apprehensive as he was so burnt on this gig years back, but in beautiful serendipity, one of the crew’s name was mentioned and how his brother said he was an old friend of the manager. The manager said that literally hearing that name was the reason he was happy to keep having the conversation. It turned out they were really good friends when they were younger, so we had an in!
After some hard work, and putting all our cards on the table, they said they’d give us ago.
When we got to site, the Manager loved our crew, how professional and friendly we were. Even after mistakes like accidentally pegging into a water line he just laughed and loved how honest we were about when things didn’t go to plan. By the first day of the festival him and his wife were kicking back at the Hotel on banana lounges, while their child rode their bike down the hill.
They absolutely loved it and the fact that everything we promised was delivered.
He told us ‘we’d done the impossible’, which was to convince him that festivals could be done right at a site as special as Licola.
Licola is still our home, and we can’t wait to be back for the next Town <3
