I still can't believe my luck.

Around August last year I heard that an organisation was planning a large arts festival, and that they were looking for interns to help. I immediately volunteered, thinking that it would be a fantastic place to do my internship - I'd love to get into directing festivals.

Not much had really happened in the first month - the President of the Committee announced that they were looking for a curator and I hadn't heard a lot about what was happening. I was at work when I got a call - a curator was hard to find for the small remuneration on offer, so did I know anyone who was maybe more of an emerging curator and would be willing to give it a go for the experience? Why yes, as a matter of fact I did! And so I went from lowly intern to Artistic Director of an arts festival.

This post, as an opening, is really more about giving an idea of all the time leading up to now that has been spent planning the festival. As a choreographer I have produced and toured my own work, so I had a small idea of what I was getting into, but I have since found out that this is like all those projects put together on steroids and then some.

The fun part - shaping the Festival - is also the least difficult. That was done years ago, and while it is difficult getting the artists to commit so far out (the festival's in September) I've at least sorted out most of the program and the artists involved. There will be a sculptural works program of ten one-day temporary installations, ten performances around the area, children's workshops, tours, food and music, and to top it all off an enormous 3D video mapping project on the side of a key building in the area. The work will respond to the broad themes of environmental sustainability as well as the history of the suburb.

The challenging parts are essentially everything else. One of the key things that I didn't consider is how much time I'd spend managing relationships. I have to CC my boss in on every email I send. I'm young and fairly inexperienced, so even though I feel confident that I can pull this off I feel a strong need to convince the committee that I know what I'm doing. I am responsible for managing all our interns, which is very strange having started as one myself, and I also have to deal with all sorts of stakeholders such as Council, local Universities, businesses and residents, other organisations we are working alongside like local galleries and ARIs and Art and About. It's a myriad of competing priorities that I have to stay on top of and that I just wasn't prepared for.

I also didn't quite understand exactly how much of this festival I'd be taking on when I accepted. The biggest hurdle we face is that everyone on the Committee works full time outside of the Festival, and in fact I'm about to start a full-time job at an arts organisation myself. We're all overcommitted things move very slowly. However, I am one of only two people getting paid to do this (albeit not much) and as such a lot of extra work falls to me - from budgeting to seeking sponsorship to marketing to applying for permits - basically anything that needs to be done. The realisation really hit me last week that if this thing fails, regardless of the situation it will be seen as nobody's fault but mine, so if I want to set up my career I'd better make damn sure I can do this.

And on that happy note, out. I'll be updating more specifically about what's going on from here on in.