Celebrating ten years of Outbreak: behind the scenes of one of the UK’s best festivals

Outbreak may well be one of the most respected festivals in the UK. As it hits its tenth year - and with a line-up that continues to impress - we pinned down the brains behind it to talk about the past, present and future.

Hey there, how’s it going? All ready for this year’s Outbreak?
Hey, we’re getting there, there’s a lot of work still to do, but we are nearly ready. We will have been working on this edition of the fest for three years by the time it happens, so it’s been a long time coming, and we’re excited to see it come to fruition! This is our first time at its new home in Manchester & the largest one we have ever done so we hope it will be really special but still feel like Outbreak of old.

You must be super busy at the moment, what’s a typical day like for you?
It’s pretty busy, but anyone and everyone is busy right now, whether they work in music or not! We all work on other things outside of the fest, so every day is different for us. We’re all based in different parts of England too, so we all work remotely and get together when we can. We’d be lying if we said it wasn’t hard to balance everything, but I think we’re giving it a good go. Oh, and lots and lots of Zoom calls…

Was the plan always for Outbreak to run long-term? 10 years is a huge achievement.
You’re right 10 years is a long time; I don’t think anyone plans for something like this to run for so long when they’re just starting out. When we were younger we just wanted to put on some bands that us and our friends liked, now it just so happens that we’re still doing that, but the number of other people who are into the bands we’re into seems to be increasing. The festival fanbase increasing over time - going from hundreds to thousands each year has allowed us to book bands that we never thought were reachable and really deliver something to remember. It is pretty special to do that when you’re independent.

What are your main points of consideration when curating the line-up, and has that changed over the years?
The bands have got to work together, and by that, we mean we want a day to flow well and make sense. Some festivals have an indie band one minute, then a pop singer, then a DJ - it’s like, cmon’, it’s gotta make some musical sense. Maybe we just care too much about the experience of the fest as a whole compared to others; I can appreciate we’re in a bit of a niche musically! We also believe creating a full line-up that’s not top-heavy (by that we mean we’re not just booking an arena-size band and then a bunch of really new small bands to support) we can create a very memorable fest where people don’t want to just see one or two bands a day, they want to watch every band every day. I think growing in size has meant we can diversify the line-up a lot more and include different genres of bands we’d have not thought about including at an early stage. We’re now pushing to include a lot more outside of the artists, such as skating, live talks, art, zine and record fairs etc. too.

If you could pick one set from any edition to see again, what would it be?
Everyone’s answers are different here, so I can’t say a specific set, but we really enjoyed 2015 and 2018. There were some memorable sets for us there from Basement, Title Fight and Turnstile. Who are now, of course, one of our headliners!

Are there any acts still on your wishlist that you hope to hit up for future events?
Of course, we’re not done yet! Not going to say who, though - that’d give it away - but we have some really exciting offers going for 2023 already.

What are the main challenges you come up against when putting on an event like this? There must have been a load of new issues over the past couple of years?
We’re sure every other festival is going to say the same thing here and say that Covid made things difficult. However, that said, for us, it did help us understand the potential of the fest and gave us time to figure out the direction we wanted to go in. We don’t think we’d have ever done such a jump in capacity going from 2000 to 6000 had we not had the time to think and plan thoroughly. Covid aside, organising an event like this has plenty of challenges, too many to list!

Do you have any surprises in store for 2022’s event?
Yes, we’ve got a few things lined up that might catch people off guard, but we can’t say anymore as it wouldn’t be a surprise!

What advice would you give someone who’d like to launch their own festival, like Outbreak?
Do you like to sleep? If the answer is yes, then don’t. Nah, but in all seriousness, it is a lot of work and pressure, so it isn’t for everyone. Our advice would be to start small and go at your own pace; you don’t need to compete with any other festivals, just compete against yourself. Putting on any event, whether that’s with 50 people, 500, 5000 or 50,000 and seeing everyone enjoy themselves can be very rewarding.