Festival CEO John Crumlish A Tribal Vision Interview

Can you tell us a bit about how you've gotten to where you are today?

I came to college in Galway and did psychology in the early 80s, then went back up to the North to Derry to do a post-grad, and taught psychology there. But I never quite got Galway out of my system, so I came back and got involved in the Arts Festival, and joined a band - The Sleepwalkers. My first job with the Arts Festival was as a volunteer; I ended up as production manager with the festival in the 90s. Then I got involved with Macnas, and after some time formed a company within Macnas called Mac Teo, where we did some corporate stuff. I returned to the Galway Arts Festival as CEO in 2003.

Why did you get involved with the Arts Festival to begin with? What was it that appealed to you?

I volunteered initially. Macnas were stuck at the time; they were doing Gulliver, and a friend of mine, Peter Staunton, who was a bass player with the Saw Doctors, asked myself and Declan Gibbons who runs the film centre, if we'd help out. The scale, the level of ambition and the insanity of trying to float an 80 foot man...he was just gorgeously insane at the time. But to pull it off, and they did. And everyone went with it. Bit by bit, Galway was utterly seduced by the Arts, from Els Comediants on through to Macnas. Royal de Luxe did a show for the Arts Festival in the cathedral carpark called the ‘Brief History of France' - it was an amazing show and it was free. I remember thinking, 'What a way to make a living'. It was just the best fun ever.

So during the 90s, I was still in the band, and I was working for the festival and for Macnas. At that time, everybody was moving over and back. It was a very vibrant scene; you had The Stunning, The Saw Doctors, you had Little Fish. Everybody was at some point either working with the festival or Macnas. It really was a town of ‘anything is possible'. Druid made the first big statement, but I'd say the Arts Festival and subsequently Macnas all made the statement that everything and anything was possible. And I think that was a big attraction for a lot of people who came to Galway - it's really a town of blow-ins.

Read the rest of the interview in A Tribal Vision.