Conference Coordinator: The Great Escape Festival 2025

The Great Escape Festival and Conference 2025 is a wrap! This instantly jumped into my list of favourite events to have worked on throughout my career - the team, the music, the content, the partners have all been incredible, and the result was a fantastically smooth production, a packed out festival, and a top tier, extra sunny edition of TGE.

As the Conference Coordinator, I worked with collaborators including AIM, the MU, FAC, MPG, Ivors Academy, the MMF, NTIA, BBC Introducing, Youth music and AudioActive to produce 3 days of incredible keynote talks, panels and workshops. We had over 130 speakers across the conference, and phenomenal keynote conversations from Rizzle Kicks’s Jordan Stephens, Skunk Anansie’s Skin, legendary footballer, broadcaster and DJ Pat Nevin, and lots more.

In addition to the conference, I also managed the ELEVATE talent development programme this year, funded by Arts Council England. Through this, we were able to host 20 emerging artists and music industry professionals at the festival, offering a bespoke programme, mentor meetings, speed meetings and some tailor-made extra sessions. The ELEVATE group were incredible - it was such a joy to meet and to work with them, and it was exciting to see how passionate and energetic they were about making the most of this opportunity, so big thanks to Arts Council for helping us to make this happen.

And finally, I managed the International Speed Meetings at the conference, supported by the Department of Business and Trade. We booked in over 200 meetings across 2 sessions for this, giving UK delegates the chance to meet live professionals from the US, Japan, Australia, Denmark, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Ireland and the Netherlands.

Thank you to everyone that took part, everyone that came along - and a very special thank you to the amazing team behind the festival, it was an absolute pleasure. On to ‘26!