Hay Festival: A miracle of ideas

To be honest, Hay-on-Wye is in the middle of nowhere. Lying on the bother between England and Wales, but actually on the Welsh side of the border, hugged by the Wye River, this rural community is blessed with rolling green hills, pruned down by diligent sheep and cows that can be seen grazing in the […]

To be honest, Hay-on-Wye is in the middle of nowhere. Lying on the bother between England and Wales, but actually on the Welsh side of the border, hugged by the Wye River, this rural community is blessed with rolling green hills, pruned down by diligent sheep and cows that can be seen grazing in the mid-day sun (on days the sun shine that is.)
But on the fringes of these hills is a sprawling tent structure that appears to spring out of the greens rising up to sometimes sunny, sometimes gray skies. In this massive structure, you find offices, event halls, restaurants and conveniences, a courtyard where people can sit on the grass, enjoy the sun and have lunch or snacks. There is a massive bookshop, tucked into one end and long stretches of sheltered walkways. All in this tent city. And this is where one of the biggest literature festivals in the world is held.
Every year, thousands of people flock to the otherwise obscure Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye for the Hay Festival, which has been going on for 29 years now. The festival has evolved in these years, outgrowing the local primary school, where it was earlier hosted, prompting the erection of a temporary tent village in a more central location, every year to host the hundreds of writers invited, and the hundreds of thousands of people who come to see and listen to them talk and read.
There is no big hotel in Hay-on-Wye and so to accommodate the people coming in for the ten-day festival between May and June, the people of the town rent out their houses to visiting guests, and offer bed and breakfast. Most of the houses in Hay itself are booked a year in advance, to accommodate some of the guest authors. Others have to find accommodation in neighboring towns or tents set up in the fields.
Blissland is home to the Gardner family and a smiling Sharon Gardner opened her door to usher in her guests. Three bedrooms in this family house have been reserved for  festival guests. Eleven nights for a total of 21 guests, on regular occasions where guests spend just a night. At the end of the festival, the Gardner family makes enough money from their bed and breakfast business to travel abroad for a six-week holiday.
But all the houses in Hay and the neighbouring towns are not enough to host all the people coming in for the festival. So smart businesses seize the opportunity. Fred Yurts, specialist in tent accommodations set up a luxury tent camping site some two minutes’ walk from the festival venue. Their tents are equipped with heating, warm beds and duvets to provide comfort in the cold Welsh nights.
And farther afield, there was another campsite for people to set up their own tents. Most of these spaces were also fully booked.
All this frenzy, all these people eager to plod their way to the middle of nowhere? What brings almost 800,000  people to this place, which usually has a population of only about 1, 500 people, where you have to pack a pair of Wellington boots, a decent overcoat and an umbrella, where the cheapest accommodation is not less than 100 pounds if you want to enjoy the festival? What really is the attraction?
Well, there is prestige. The Hay Festival is reputed to be the first literary festival in the UK and still uses that mantra to beef up its reputation. But the programme is simply incredible. Perhaps no other festival gathers the quantity and quality of writers, thinkers, and creatives as the Hay Festival does. This year’s row call included Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Aexievich, double Booker Prize  winner Salman Rushdie, and Booker Prize Winners, Ben Okri and Marlon James,  actors Benedict Cumberbatch, (whose spotting and casual apparel at Hay was made much of by The Telegraph the next day), Olivia Coleman and James Bond director Sam Mendes and actor Mark Strong. In the past the festival has drawn two American Presidents, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, among many other world celebrities and thought leaders.
Yet, like Hay, the festival itself is said to have had humble beginnings. In 1987 Norman Florence and his son Peter sat around a kitchen table and devised the idea for the festival. This idea sprouted and grew, and for many years, the festival was held at the local primary school. It soon outgrew that and in 2005 was moved to a central location just outside the town.
Today, the idea has taken roots in several countries across the world. There is a Hay Festival in Cartagena in Columbia, Segovia in Spain, Queretaro in Mexico and Arequipa in Peru. The Story Moja Festival in Nairobi, Kenya used to partner with the Hay but the partnership has since ended on the heels of the Westgate attack that happened during the festival, in which Ghanaian poet, Kofi Awoonor was killed.
The model for the festivals in other countries and other cities is to host them in tourist cities, cities that have the capacity to cope with the guests that would flock in without stressing the local infrastructure. For those who have been to some of these offshoot festivals, coming to Hay-on-Wye draws different reactions.
Spanish author, Milena Busquets, who had been to Hay Segovia in Spain found the experience totally different from what she was expecting.
“Only the British would get away with something like this,” she said dismissively.
The lack of diversity is also an issue. Black faces among the festival guests and participants are rare and far between, like moon sightings on Ramadan eve. This is one area the orgnisers need to consciously improve on.
Family and Community Business
The Festival director, Peter Florence is an unassuming man. He was standing in the Green Room, an exclusive zone for artists to relax and prepare for their appearances. The worried, tired look on his face melts into a smile. He seems humbled by the compliments on what a great job he has been doing putting the festival together and making sure everything works.
For him, it is a thing of great pride. Not only for his family but his entire town. Everyone in Hay-on-Wye is sucked into the whirlpool of the festival. People, young and old volunteer to work for the festival. House owners make money renting out rooms and providing breakfast, farmers sell food to festival organisers, restaurants spring up at the festival venue and town’s people take the opportunity to trade, selling anything, from strawberries to second hand clothes and trinkets.
When Richard Booth set up the first bookshop in Hay in 1962,  he couldn’t have imagined how much transformation that would lead to, he couldn’t have imagined it even when in 1977, he declared Hay an independent kingdom and was crowned King with his horse named the Prime Minister (an obvious publicity stunt of course). He couldn’t have imagined that that first bookshop he set up will lead to Hay being crowned Britain’s capital of books, with 30 bookshops in that small town. And they do sell books like crazy in Hay.
Book sales have gone up by 15 per cent at the festival this year and this coming after they have had to expand the book retail space to accommodate books by non-festival authors.
The festival has transformed Hay and its people. Gareth Howell-Jones on a normal day is a garden designer. But during the festival he runs the festival bookshop.
It is a testament to how much the festival has transformed the people of this town and its culture. And it has also inspired numerous other festivals in little Hay, 10 others in fact. Hay-on-Wye Food Festival, Hay Arts and Crafts Festival, Hay-on-Wye Horse and Pony Show and Hay-on-Wye Winter Food Festival among others.
In Hay, they talk of “festival season” as farmers would talk of rainy season in Nigeria. If anything proves that books can change lifes, Hay is it.