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Richard Phillips
The retired director of the UK's Leamington Music Festival receives a final award
In May 2024, Richard Phillips retired as director of the UK's Leamington Music Festival, after the 2024 festival. At its recent conference in Bristol, the British Arts Festivals Association (BAFA) awarded Phillips the 2024 award for Exceptional Service and Outstanding Contribution to Arts Festivals.
Phillips, who has, since 1977, created and directed one-hundred-and-nine festivals, was previously given, at a BAFA conference in Brighton in 2010, the award for Outstanding Contribution to Arts Festivals. Up to that time the award had been given to individuals from the festivals in Brighton, Edinburgh and Glastonbury.
Still living in the house in Warwick where he was born in 1940, Phillips, after three years of teaching in Italy and Warwick, joined Sadler's Wells Opera in 1966 and then moved to Yorkshire Arts Association for the whole of the 1970s. In 1976, a three-month sabbatical spent researching on the continent, led to the creation of the York Early Music Festival in 1977 and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 1978.
Returning to Warwick in 1980, he started a wine business but also soon became involved with Warwick Arts Society which had launched Warwick Arts Week that year. This was to lead to him directing nearly seventy festivals in Warwick and Leamington and, in 2002, he also created a literary event now known as the Warwick Words History Festival. Programming of these festivals has always been strongly themed and in Leamington, Czech music and musicians have been a constant and unique contribution, going back to the Czechoslovak Free Army being stationed in the area between 1940 and 1942.
In the UK's Midlands area, he also directed other festivals, including the Stratford on Avon Music Festival for eight years, the Charlecote Park and Baddesley Clinton Festivals for The National Trust, the Solihull Arts Festival and a couple in Birmingham. He was also involved in the creation of the Oundle International Organ Festival which started in 1985.
An important breakthrough for this recently retired director was his appointment as director of the Norfolk & Norwich Triennial Festival (which dates back to the 1770s). Phillips' first festival was in October 1988; it then became an annual event, with other activities around the year. He remained in this post until October 1991. It led to his programming of two of the King's Lynn Festivals in subsequent years.
Richard Phillips in 2012
Richard Phillips comments:
No careers officer at school or university could have envisaged a career of nearly sixty years in music with this emphasis on festivals. It was a matter in the 1980s and 90s of thriving on the expansion of sponsorship and the creation of the National Lottery. It meant total involvement, planning, programming, managing, attending virtually every performance and sometimes if necessary, washing the wine glasses for the sponsor's reception the following day!
I am very lucky to have had these years promoting the arts. It has created many friendships and luckily I inherited a house big enough for us to have many artists to stay and our Visitors Book happily reminds us of the social side. If putting on festivals is not about fun and friendship, then I say forget it!
Richard and Veronica Phillips are now honorary presidents of the Leamington Music Festival. The artistic director is Helen Beecroft. The next festival takes place in May 2025. There's further information at leamingtonmusic.org
Posted 26 December 2024 by Keith Bramich
