Written by Hattie Thomas As the festival nears its end for 2013 I manage to grab a few moments with Artistic Director of Creative Youth, Aniela Zaba, before she has to get back to work.

HT: Can you tell us about your role as Artistic Director?

AZ: My role has changed quite a lot; I have been Artistic Director for the past four years but I have also been Festival Director. In this last year, the work of charity has grown so much we decided to appoint a separate Festival Director which means I am now responsible for expanding our year round activity.

My main role is to have the vision of what we deliver for the year and then to deliver it. Developing our mentoring programme (Creative Talent) and giving opportunities for interns, project managers, volunteers, we want to make sure we train our young people so that for any idea they have, we can turn it into reality. We want to make sure they have transferable skills to take to other sectors and not just the arts; we want to make entrepreneurs of the future.

We often teach that we want young businesses to be sustainable, but being a charity we haven’t been much like that ourselves. So we want to change that so that we earn our income instead of just seeking funding all the time.

HT: When does the preparation for the festival begin?

AZ: September – we have about a month to wrap-up and then we re-open applications. There is a huge amount involved in the preparations and we are only a team of three. The first thing is about having a vision of next year, but fundamentally for the first six months we are working on fundraising. It costs a lot of money to put the festival on and that’s why finding a way to finance ourselves is really important.

HT: I understand you were a large part of the creation of the festival?

AZ: It was already an idea when I applied for the job. I went for the interview and mentioned that I wanted to run a multi-arts festival rather than just theatre, and I was offered the job. Between myself and the original trustees, we wanted the festival to be more than just three weeks. We wanted the young people to be protagonists in all areas – branding, press, marketing, and behind the scenes work as well as on the set.

HT: How important is it to nurture the arts in young people?

Not everyone will work in the arts but it is a massive confidence boosting opportunity. The arts encourage teamwork amongst other skills, bringing lots of things together to make something happen, and we also want to give them really high profile performance opportunities. The festival has such a variety of work from main house productions with kids who already have lots of experience, to studio performances where they are performing in a theatre for the first time. Having the performance opportunity is great for these young people, and this year we have a whole new area where they can get involved. The press team has enabled young people to embrace the arts and learn to critically analyse them and work together as a team.

HT: How does the Creative Talent programme work?

AZ: We came up with the idea after the 2010 festival because we started to spot companies who we thought were exceptional in terms of their artistic practice. They are mainly young start-up companies, just out of college or university, and their arts skills are phenomenal, but they are lacking in the understanding of how to write a business plan, funding, marketing and so on. They can’t just be good at the lights, camera, action bit but need to be good at everything so that people will come and see the show. The programme is not about interfering in the artistic process but looking forward, finding ways to employ those companies to help them gain work. It’s great because it makes it a two-way relationship. We are now starting to get to the stage where some of these companies will graduate from the programme and hopefully they will then come back and help new young companies so that it becomes a circular process.

HT: How do you see IYAF evolving in the future?

AZ: I think the last two years have been the start of where we really see this festival going. I think it took us three years of working things out and now it’s about honing it and increasing the quality and diversity of what’s on offer. Bringing Jeremy [Sachs, Festival Director] in is interesting because of his background with disadvantaged groups and those who wouldn’t necessarily engage with the arts. I think we have a commitment to ensuring that young people would be involved with high quality work so we should always be looking at projects that involve young people throughout the year.

My personal role in IYAF will become much more about delivering some big major projects within the festival but I would be mortified if I wasn’t busy. I just see it getting bigger and buzzier, with more and more companies. It’s a real testing ground for work and it is really exciting watching all the works in progress, giving people the space and time to develop their work in a safe environment.

HT: Are there countries you would like to get involved that the festival hasn’t managed to reach yet?

AZ: I don’t think its about countries we haven’t made links with, what is tricky is that it is so expensive for companies to come over and get accommodation. It’s really only those who can afford it that join us, which is why the British Council projects are so good because they help those who wouldn’t be able to attend, breaking those funding barriers. Perhaps in the future we can find more digital projects to link people around the world without necessarily having to be physically at the festival.

Based on information supplied by Matt Gleinig.