COOL AS LEICESTER

INTERVIEW: We chat to Handmade Festival’s John Helps about the 10th birthday and end of the festival

John has been part of the team behind Handmade Festival for 10 years, as well as promoting a range of other shows through his company, Robot Needs Home. As the announcement came that Handmade Festival’s 10th birthday would be their last festival, we caught up with John to find out about this year’s line-up, his highlights over the years, and what’s next.

When you launched Handmade Festival did you envisage making it to 10 years?

I think you always hope the things you create will last a long time and hopefully leave some sort of legacy, but also you never know whether people will be in to what you do! By about year 4 I think it felt like it had the legs to make it to a decade.

Tell us about this year’s line-up, who shouldn’t we miss?

This is a completely uncompromising line-up – theres no-one on it that we don’t love and we obviously think you should get down early and discover something new early in the day – theres some of the best of Leicester’s music scene alongside national artists who are absolutely incredible. Picking individual names I think does a disservice to the rest of the line-up – there genuinely isn’t anything I’d skip.

Is there anything that makes this year’s festival different from the previous 9?

We’ve focussed a little on bringing back friends from the last decade. Maybeshewill, Grace Petrie, Johnny Foreigner and Sam from Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly (amongst others) played the first event ten years ago and have very kindly come back to help us celebrate turning 10. We’ve also made sure we’ve balanced that with acts that are new to the festival and reflect the cities music scene in 2023 as well. 

What has been your proudest achievement since launching Handmade Festival?

The three of us managing to work together on the event for so long feels like something of an achievement. Myself, Matt from Firebug and Nik from The Cookie work together to try and create an event that reflects both our individual tastes as promoters, where we feel the city is in any given year, and remain focussed on new and emerging music. It’s hard balancing those personalities sometimes, but ultimately its one of the most rewarding projects I work on and is genuinely the product of all three of our blood sweat and tears – as well as a tonne of other friends and volunteers over the years

Could you pick out your top 3 acts of the last 10 years?

For me? Frightened Rabbit, Pulled Apart by Horses and Idles were all absolute smashers.

With this being the final Handmade Festival, do you think someone will be able to come in and fill that city centre, independent festival space?

I hope someone does and I hope they receive the support from the city, the venues and from local government that an event like this deserves.

What has been your favourite thing about working as part of the Leicester music scene, both with Handmade Festival and with Robot Needs Home?

Bringing live music to Leicester often (errr… almost always) feels like a bit of a thankless task – especially when the sort of music you have enthusiasm for is weird and noisy and sometimes a bit unpleasant to listen to. The city as a whole doesn’t always seem super on board with events like this or with live music in general, and thats not necessarily a complaint – if they aren’t buying what we’re selling, thats our problem, not theirs – but it does make the little wins all the more rewarding I suppose.

I’m extremely proud to have had so many friends and acquaintances buy in to some of my stupid ideas and give up their time to help make them a reality. The folks who have volunteered their time to make White Noise, Handmade, Forgotten Futures, Great Central (as well as the gigs and club nights and the record label) successful are to a fault absolutely incredible, and many have gone on to much bigger and better things off the back of it. Importantly, the music (and arts) community in Leicester is so supportive of grass roots projects and ideas that it makes getting them to a certain point relatively easy – where we fall down is in local and national support for those projects once they reach a certain size – to help tip them over to a critical mass. That said, I’d probably rather have a million events that I’ve had a great time building with friends than one boring but financially solvent one.

What’s next for Robot Needs Home?

I hope we’ll celebrate our 20th anniversary in 2024 in some way, but for now much of what we do in Leicester has been shelved. We still operate as a record label and provide touring services to international artists somewhat relentlessly.

Give us all the Handmade ticket details

Tickets to Handmade are available for £15 from Gigantic. It takes place at Firebug and Duffy’s in the city centre next weekend.

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