AV and music industries must work closer together, says AVA founder

AVA (Audio Visual Arts) founder and creative director Sarah McBriar has spoken to Headliner about why she believes collaboration between the music and AV industries should be far greater, why her organisation has grown so significantly since launching in 2014, and what the future looks like for immersive AV projects…

There has always been a significant degree of crossover between the pro AV and music worlds, but since the turn of the millennium, demand for ever-more immersive productions and experiences has grown exponentially. Be it in recorded music or live performance, the desire to create ever-more sophisticated offerings is stronger than ever. Pop and rock shows are increasingly pushing the boundaries of what is possible in live productions, with Ed Sheeran’s recent Mathematics tour, which was described by the star’s production designer as ‘his most expansive set design yet’, serving as just one example of how things in this corner of the market are developing.

Even in the world of visual arts, AV collaborations are becoming more and more prevalent, with London’s new Lightroom venue hosting an immersive AV exhibit of the work of legendary UK painter and photographer David Hockney.

Yet, while AV and the arts are indeed finding new ways of cross pollinating, the potential for ever-greater, meaningful crossover is vast. Which is where McBriar and AVA come in.

With a long-held passion for all things electronic music and AV, she founded AVA back in 2014 with the aim of facilitating greater crossover between these two fields. Over the past nine years, its scope and reach have broadened significantly without losing sight of its central aim of helping these two industries to evolve together. Today, AVA hosts annual festival/conferences in London and McBriar’s native Belfast, with the upcoming Belfast event taking place across June 2-3.

To find out more about McBriar’s plans for the organisation, Headliner sat down with her for a chat about her fascinating career to date, the future of AVA, and the trends shaping the music and AV landscape…

Tell us about the origins of AVA and why you initially launched it.

AVA stands for Audio Visual Arts. It’s a festival, a conference, and an event series. It started originally to celebrate, amplify, and develop predominantly electronic music and visual arts talent. That was nine years ago, and it has become much broader since then with regards to the artists and genres we work with. Our main events are a festival and conference in Belfast and one in London. They are very different events. The one in Belfast is a big, outdoor, multistage festival and conference, whereas with London it’s almost like the conference is as big a part of the programme as the evening event.

It was born through the need of a more creative platform for this type of talent. I’m originally from Belfast; I have worked on many different events, from Glastonbury to Manchester International Festival to the Warehouse Project. And I could see what was happening in the UK and Europe with these really exciting creatively led festivals and I thought that was lacking in Northern Ireland at the time. What was happening was very standard, drinks-sponsored headline style shows. They weren’t creative in their output in terms of the experience. That’s where the initial idea came from.

It started in Belfast with two stages on the docks of an old shipping yard where they built the Titanic. Then it really evolved over time. We do many events around the world now, including in Mumbai, Amsterdam, Glasgow, and Dublin. We also do a broadcast stage which has become quite infamous at Boiler Room, and we are close to 25 million views on our streams now. That’s been a really successful partnership and is part of our Belfast event. It wears a lot of hats now but that’s what its core purpose was, and still is.

What are some of the big trends shaping your events at the moment?

The topics that we covered in our event in February in London covered diversity and having a narrative in the visual aspect of music. That was an amazing talk where we delved into how you can visualise music and what the process is as a designer to go down that route, and what connection the visual aspect has when you are experiencing music. We also explore the very business-y side of the music industry, like sync publishing, record labels, how to earn and grow as an artist. And we look at venues and the technology that is helping them to grow and develop.

From the arts side, we had Steel City Discs do a live printing for cassettes and artists, and we worked with Printworks, where we commissioned visual artists to work with us for the show in the evening time. Max Cooper was one of the headliners and he did an incredible live AV show.

What was your route into the industry?

I always had a passion for music, arts, and culture. I come from a family that’s very steeped in that. But my brain is like half artist half mathematical, which is quite unusual! I’ve always enjoyed being heavily involved in music arts and performance, but I’ve always enjoyed the more organisational side and bringing things together. And I definitely went down a road where it was like, is this the side I want to work on? And it was. I love the energy involved in it; the pain it takes to get there, but when it all comes together it’s amazing. There is a thrill in it.

I left Belfast when I was 18 and went to university in Manchester. I had four great years there and I also did a year in Canada. I then did a short spell in London before returning to Manchester and I ended up taking a job at Manchester City Football Club, so not a traditional route into what I do now. But I worked for an incredible boss. I was assistant to the chief of infrastructure, and I saw how quickly the city changed and I worked across so many departments, from architecture to project management, and my boss saw I had a real flair for culture and experience. So, I did their non-match day tourism offering and I really learned how to grow a business unit and work with big teams. But I always knew I wanted to work in music and arts, so after some years there I decided to do a Masters and I went to work with Glastonbury during that time. I then setup AVA.

I had been going to Glastonbury for years with friends and it’s always such a unique experience. You meet so many incredible people and see stuff that you wouldn’t have even known existed, and I loved that idea of brining something fresh and new to people in a different way. So, I started AVA from the ground up with a very small team of people in Belfast. I got a small bit of funding to start it, and the growth was very organic. I kept a job alongside it, and it was in year three that it started to really become much bigger than something you can do on the side. We started with 1,500 attendees across two stages, now it's 10,000 a day across four stages. That’s just Belfast. In London it’s about 7,000 and we have some big plans for how we want to grow it.

How beneficial was your experience at Manchester City in shaping the work you would go on to do? As you said, it’s not a typical route to the kind of work you’re doing now.

It was absolutely beneficial. I was a project manager and when you run a festival or any large event, you are managing a whole series of small projects within one. Having that management and control over budgets is really important, so learning about that first-hand was hugely relevant. I was given the opportunity to work on the non-match day experience, so I was able to put a lot of my creative heart and soul into that project. Merging that with the business and the management side built up my confidence a lot. When starting your own business, it’s a big risk, you don’t know how it’s going to turn out, so you have to reach that point where you feel confident enough to make that leap and you believe in yourself and what you’re doing. So that was definitely part of my journey.

How can the AV and music industries intersect more than they have done so far? Are you expecting more crossover with immersive elements increasingly being incorporated within live and recorded music?

I’m probably biased, but yes, absolutely. The live side of music is moving more towards immersive AV shows and experiences. I wouldn’t say it’s everyone but it’s a big part. Look at someone like Ed Sheeran, who is just one guy with a guitar, his touring show is an absolutely huge production. Electronic music acts like the Chemical Brothers have also made big AV shows that are now a major part of what people want to experience when they go to see them. The success of Printworks as a venue and the AV element of that is a big part of the show and a lot of people want to experience that. It’s set a bar now. It’s a big part of what we bring to our festival in Belfast as well.

One thing to note is that it’s very expensive to do these shows, and that is a big challenge between where we are now and where we’ll be in five years’ time. Those changes will happen I think, but it is a big investment for the artist and the promoter and venue. I can see that changing as technology evolves. Gaming is a great example of this. If you think about gaming and how people experience it today compared to five or 10 years ago, it’s so different.

Listen to an extended version of this interview below.