Case Study: Roundhouse Young Producer - Tal Fineman

Tal Fineman was a member of the Young Producers project which offers 18-25 year-olds the chance to programme events and shows for Roundhouse Rising Festival. Young Producers like Tal assist the Roundhouse team in programming, marketing and producing Roundhouse Rising, learning from festival industry experts while programming two days of live music and masterclasses. We caught up with Tal before the festival to find out about his experience...

"Up until a few months ago, my perception of the Roundhouse didn’t extend beyond acknowledging it as one of London’s many live music venues. I stumbled upon the ‘Rising Festival Producers’ course without any awareness of the multitude of projects for young creatives put on here, and applied on a whim the morning before the deadline.

Fast forward to today, and not only have I become aware of the wealth of opportunities for young people provided by the venue, I’ve also had the opportunity to pick the brains of inspirational professionals at the forefront of the live music and festival industries. Throughout the course we’ve met members of the teams that plan and manage stages at Glastonbury, Bestival and other major festivals around the country as well as local authority community events planners, arts council representatives and charities working at the heart of the UK’s live events industry.

This chance to engage directly with the industry has been a fantastic networking opportunity and has provided me with inspiration and motivation to kickstart a career in the music industry. But this hasn’t even been the focus of our project over the past months. Under the guidance of Creative Brain’s Aniela Zaba, we’ve been given complete control over two days of Rising Festival 2017 – Roundhouse’s annual festival of new music. We selected London as a theme for both of our events, which will celebrate the influence of the city on the heritage and development of music culture, and the diverse range of genres, artists and musical communities that coexist around the capital.

I’m part of the programming team for these events, which means I’ve spent my spare time in the past few weeks helping to find, research and contact the performers and panellists who’ll provide the entertainment on both nights. It's been a steep learning curve, working around a very quick turnaround – the lineup has taken shape almost entirely within the last month, and now we’re frantically making finishing touches. Meanwhile, the rest of the group is hard at work making sure everything else is in place, from set design to marketing and production. One of the most rewarding aspects of this course so far has been seeing ideas we brainstormed early in the process, return to the table as fully-fledged plans that another member of the team has run with and developed. It’s so exciting to see how all our ideas are finally come together, during Roundhouse Rising."