EWF is excited to have woman of many talents Eleanor Boydell join the team as one of the festival’s 2017 Creative Producers. Busy working away on Literary Live Art: Performing Place, Eleanor shares with us her festival experience, a few of her favourite reads and her own advice for working within a creative field.

What about EWF drew you in?

Having heard great things from people who’ve held the position in previous years, I knew the Creative Producer role was a fantastic learning and professional development opportunity.  As an emerging creative producer, I was looking for a way to get my feet wet with the support and resourcing of an established organisation.  I’m really excited by the essential role arts and literary festivals play in drawing together artists and audiences, and being inside EWF and seeing all the complexities of how the Festival happens is a great privilege.

What else are you up to?

I’m currently completing my Master of Arts Management at RMIT, and have spent the past 12 months working on diverse arts and cultural projects, including exhibition curation, review writing, organisational communications and more.  My emerging ambition concerns creative production and programming in the performance and live art space.  Outside work and study, I’m a committed volunteer team leader at a women’s support phone line; and I run away on a regular basis to train, perform and laugh with the Women’s Circus.

What’s sitting in your reading pile?

I just finished Michelle Tea’s Valencia, which I started while in San Francisco – I was stirred by the eerie connection with Tea’s histories as I walked the same streets she writes so vividly about.  I’ve also been devouring Marie Kelly’s little collection of poems Pixel People.  Next, I think I’ll finally be picking up Maxine Beneba Clarke’s The Hate Race.

You can invite three book characters to dinner…

Laura Esquivel’s Tita de la Garza (Like Water for Chocolate), one of Marsha Mehran’s Arminpour sisters (Pomegranate Soup) and of course J.K. Rowling’s Molly Weasley – because they’re doing the cooking, right?

What’s the best advice you’ve heard or learnt about working in a creative field?

Go and see and do as much art as possible!  It’s the best piece of advice I’ve been given and it’s the most important one to pass on.  When we get busy actually doing the work of arts management it’s too easy to run out of time to enjoy and experience art, but experiencing art has got to be a priority.  Not only because it helps us stay connected with the artists and ideas that are leading the industry, but also because it reminds us why we do the work.

As part of EWF 2017, Eleanor is producing Literary Live Art: Performing Place. 

The full program for EWF can be found here.