Mitchelstown native Shane Dunne was keener than most for a sunny conclusion to July this year. He convinced 10,000 people to journey to his Cork home town for the Indiependence music and arts festival, and he wanted to avoid another revenue-eroding washout at all costs.

Dunne’s Cork shindig was spared any major downpours this time round, as revellers flocked to Indiependence to hear Bell X1, Idlewild, The Strypes and a host of other acts rock the Mitchelstown venue from July 29 to 31.

Such are the vicissitudes you face organising anything outdoors in Ireland, but Dunne (36) didn’t have to gamble on the weather to earn a crust. He has a Master’s in microbiology and had a comfy job in the Department of Agriculture before he opted to pack it in and try music promotion.

The first iteration of Dunne’s Indiependence festival was staged as a free event in Mitchelstown in 2006, but when Dunne subsequently tried to commercialise it he racked up sizeable losses. He’s since managed to turn his pet venture into a profitable enterprise, selling out the festival for three years running and this year expanding capacity from 8,000 to 10,000.

Career Change

Dunne, who is based in Dublin, said that his career took a left turn in his mid-20s. “I was a microbiologist with the Department of Agriculture for six years and it was a permanent and pensionable job. But I just decided that I had enough of the public sector, so I left to do music management and other things for a while, before I got my own company up and running,” he explains.

Dunne formed Curve Music Management in 2009, and recalls that it was difficult trying to make ends meet for the first few years. “You have to chase every penny when you go out on your own. There have been times where I haven’t been sure where the next pay cheque is coming from, but I never regretted leaving the department job.”

Mitchelstown had been running a small festival for years but it ran into financial trouble in 2004. Dunne’s first attempt to fill the festival vacuum in the town was in 2006 and comprised a single stage in the town square.

“I did that for the next two years and in 2008 it became too successful, with large crowds gathering in the town. I was called into the Garda station and told that if I wanted to do this again I’d need to go to a green field and put more control on it.”

Dunne reorganised the festival with camping and initially it didn’t work. “The 2009 festival was rough and mucky, and it lost a lot of money – around €60,000. That mightn’t sound like much but when you’re essentially a sole trader who quit his job it was a sticky situation to find yourself in.”

Shane Dunne

However, the feedback from festival-goers was sufficiently positive to convince Dunne there was a viable business beneath the mud-spattered losses. “We sat down and restructured, finding a better location and approach.

“I cobbled together a small bit of investment from friends, giving me some bargaining power to go back to the suppliers to do a deal. I convinced the suppliers that they’d get everything I owed them back if they put their faith in the festival finding its feet in a couple of years.”

In 2010, Curve Music Management’s accumulated losses had grown to €108,000 and the business had year-end cash of €257. The company booked a profit of €39,000 in 2011 but lucked out with the weather in 2012. “That was the wettest summer in 40 years,” says Dunne.

“You can go €80,000 over budget just to make the festival site secure for attendees when these situations occur. I calculated that every 15 minutes of heavy rain was probably costing me €1,000. After the festival, we ended up with 50 acres of land without a blade of grass.”

Cheap Seats

There are over 300 festivals taking place in Ireland this year, many of which will tempt the same music fans that Dunne wants to bring to Mitchelstown. He says that his USP with Indiependence began with cheap tickets. “In the first year, we charged €60 for a weekend ticket. This year the early bird three-day camping ticket was priced at €90 and the full price is €119.

“People also like that our festival is compact and easy to get around. Mitchelstown is only a 15-minute walk away and you can head in there for a pint in a glass and a poo in porcelain if you want.”

The indie rock band line-up at Indiependence is impressive given the festival’s size, and the event has established a reputation as a proving ground for musicians on the rise. The event featured Hozier just as he hit the big time and it was also the first festival that Kodaline and Walking on Cars took part in. Both those bands now sell out top Dublin venues.

The Indiependence festival is held on fifty acres of farmland in the grounds of Ballinwillin House, an 18th century building outside Mitchelstown. Ballinwillin is part hotel and part farm, breeding venison and boar meat, and is owned and run by Pat and Miriam Mulcahy.

“We butt heads like two stags sometimes,” says Dunne. “Pat’s a farmer and he wants his land kept in good nick. Marching thousands of people through the grounds and camping there can wreck it. Pat wants the land put back together properly after we’re finished. If it means having to harrow and reseed, we just get it done.”

In Dunne’s view, too many cooks spoil the festival broth in Ireland. “Every year we see festivals pop up and then promptly disappear,” he says. “This year Ravelóid, the planned Irish language music festival in Dublin, never even got off the ground, despite €18,000 funding from taxpayers.

“For events of below 5,000 capacity, you don’t need an events license, but anything above that is when you have to start dealing with red tape – the HSE, gardai, fire officers, local councils etc.

“Organisers of smaller festival trip up by thinking that all they need is a stage, a band and some production, and then they can sell tickets. Once they get into the nitty-gritty, then they see the extent of the costs, which include security, sanitation, rubbish disposal, insurance, power and more.

“VAT is 9% on ticket sales and 23% on everything else. It’s like a tree: naive organisers focus on the trunk and organise the main stuff, but then get brought down by all those branches of extra cost.”

Tapping state bodies for support rarely ends successfully, Dunne says. “For example, even though I bring 10,000 people to Mitchelstown, if they’re camping and not staying in a Fáilte Ireland-approved hotel or B&B, or because I’m not on the Wild Atlantic Way, I don’t meet the funding criteria. However, if you’re running something out in West Cork for 300 to 400 people you might get Fáilte Ireland funding.”

Dunne regularly travels to the UK to wine and dine band agents. “One of the problems with small festivals like ours is that we can only offer bands one event i.e. Indiependence at a set price. Bigger promoters like MCD can offer numerous gigs, arena shows and festival appearances abroad as a package. It’s very difficult to compete with that.

“As a small festival organiser you have to be realistic. We’re never going to be able to get Coldplay to Mitchelstown, and that’s just the way it is.”

Market Niche

Having carved out a market niche, Indiependence is on the radar for corporate and media partnerships. The main drinks sponsor is Molson Coors and its craft beer subsidiary Franciscan Well. “Festival-goers understand that we need sponsors to keep the ticket prices down,” Dunne maintains.

“We’re only now in a scenario where sponsors are coming to us and we do turn some of them down, despite good financial offers. It’s important to tie down what a brand can bring to a festival. The Bacardi tent in the Electric Picnic is a good example of how a sponsor can add to the overall festival.”

For publicity, Indiependence has partnered with Cork radio station Red FM and national station Today FM. “We pay them a small amount of money but it’s a fraction of the value of the coverage we get in return,” says Dunne. The festival has around 35,000 fans on Facebook but Dunne says that social media trends are changing fast.

“Nearly 60% of our attendees are female and at the festival they’re using Snapchat and Instagram, not Facebook. We were talking to them in the wrong language, so we’ve moved to change that, and I haven’t printed a poster for Indiependence in two years.”

Dunne’s Indiependence gig is a full-time venture, but he also has other strings to his bow. Through Curve Music Management, he works with Irish band The Coronas and with the Web Summit. “I’m involved with the Collision festival in New Orleans and the Web Summit proper in Lisbon, organising the night summit, pub crawl part.”