I’m With The Band: LoveBox’s Clare Lusher
If you are into your music, then surely one of your ideal jobs would be working for a festival. Access all areas, hanging out with the bands, enjoying the music, not having to scramble for tickets or work out just which festivals you can go to based on your budget.
Clare Lusher is one such lucky lady. As Marketing Director for the Mama Group, she looks after the Lovebox, Vintage and Wilderness Festivals as well as a number of music venues.
With Lovebox now in its tenth year, the London festival held in Victoria Park East London features the likes of Hot Chip, Friendly Fires, Lana Del Rey, Kelis and Grace Jones with each of the headliners are representative of the artistes who have played at the festival over the past decade. To celebrate their tenth anniversary, the festival has a decade of love theme and festival founders Groove Armada are coming back and playing a very special set featuring loads of special guests.
Here Clare tells us more about what makes Lovebox unique, how she got her dream job and what she really does as Marketing Director.
What makes Lovebox unique from other London festivals?
It’s the creative content really. Our line-up in quite diverse – we’re not one genre of music but also we believe that the creative content is almost as important as the musical content and we spend a lot of time and energy and budget making the site look really beautiful. For example we build bespoke experiences for each of brand partners to enhance the experience of the people who come and that is unique – no other festival really does that. Everything is really integrated.
How did your job with Lovebox come about?
A very good friend of mine from university used to run Lovebox and managed Groove Armada and I was at his house in Brighton late one night about four years ago and mentioned I was looking for a change in career. He said: ‘actually why don’t you come and work for Lovebox?’ and I kind of thought about it for about a second and then said: ‘Yeah, that sounds perfect!’
Is it your dream job then?
It is absolutely my dream job. I am incredibly lucky to be working there and we’re all very good friends. It’s a team of very like-minded people and it’s still run as an independent festival and the whole team has been there from the beginning when it was a club night in London.
We imagine it’s all fun, hanging back stage with the bands…
Not at all – my job is about selling tickets ultimately whilst maintaining the integrity of the brand. There is always the balance between being commercial and selling enough tickets to allow us to book brilliant artists but at the same time not getting sucked into being too mainstream. So that can be quite challenging.
I actually now work across three different festivals – Wilderness in Oxfordshire, Vintage which is in July and this year is in Northumberland.
My last festival is in mid-August but up to the end of the month I am doing the post event marketing and then September you are pretty much starting all over again. We’re already booking acts for 2013 and you have your earlybird tickets going on sale straight after the festival. Then I start planning the art work, get the websites redesigned and debrief with the media partners and start the new campaigns.
Though having said that a lot of us go out of the country in September. There is a rule in our company that is if you work the festival season then you shouldn’t really be in the office on September. You need to relax, have a good time and get your energy levels back. Then October we hit the ground running again.
What advice would you give to other women out there who want to work for a festival?
If you are just leaving university it is all about work experience. We have so many interns and we are always looking for them. If you are in a position where you can work for expenses and dedicate yourself fulltime festival from April to the festival itself then you can get the most phenomenal experience. If you’re successful then more often than not you will be offered a job.
Lovebox at Victoria Park in East London runs for three days, Friday 15, Sat 16 and Sun 17th June. Visit their website for further information and tickets.
