Arundel Festival’s unsung heroes

The first, of course, is the festival brochure, which lists all the entertainment and activities taking place and helps everyone to check out beforehand which ones they would like to attend, and also makes sure they get to the right venue at the right time.

Putting it all together is a mammoth task, but it’s one which this year Debbie Kennedy has handled calmly and efficiently for the second time, working behind the scenes to bring together and put into order the huge volume of information which comes in from a large number of sources.

It isn’t simply a case of building up listings – she has to diligently sort everything into appropriate categories and colourcode them so that it’s easy for people to find their way round the pages of the brochure as well as the festival itself.

And, just as importantly, it has to look good. The brochure is the first thing most people see as festival-time approaches, so it must reflect the originality, creativity and passion of such a flagship event.

“It’s an honour to be asked to do the festival brochure and it’s also a pleasure to be working with a great team of people,” said Debbie, a talented designer with a great sense of humour whose website, www.norobotshere.com says ‘I think geek, but I speak human’.

The team helping on the brochure includes Alice Gilmour and Phoebe Kirk.

“The person I couldn’t do without is ‘Aunty Barb’ who deals with all the sponsors and advertisers – she is a marvel. It’s a very big job putting everything together, working under pressure, but everyone has a smile on their face,” Debbie added.

Someone who will be making full use of the brochure once the festival starts is photographer Scott Younger, whose involvement began last year but is now on a much more organised basis for 2014.

Having covered a vast variety of events in 2013, he realised it was impossible for one person to be everywhere at a festival on such a scale, so this time he has arranged for a dedicated team of enthusiastic young photographers to help him out.

Scott, originally from New Zealand, moved to Madehurst in 2011 after spending 40 years travelling all over the world, initially through his career in international business systems, during which he lived in 11 countries for more than a year each.

This is where the 53-year-old developed his passion for photography.

His connection to the festival started with just taking pictures for its website. But he soon started volunteering more often, last year taking 7,500 photos of the event,

“It’s impossible to do everything yourself, for one person to be everywhere and photograph everything during the festival, so this year I have formed a team of 12. I’ve lined up all the events and various elements, asked members of the team which they would like to cover and matched them up. They can also do any of the street stuff they like,” he said.

The team will and Scott will then decide on the best photos to use for the festival website and press coverage.

“It will also create an archive for the future – it’s quite exciting to think that in 100 years’ time, people could be looking at our images of the festival,” he added.