7 Questions With Michael John Harris: Vision Festival Is Where Ideas Collide

1. Vision Festival began with the idea of bringing together the extraordinary organisations concentrated within a few streets of King’s Cross. What made this the right moment to create the festival, and what did you feel was missing from London’s existing cultural calendar?

There’s an incredible energy to King’s Cross at the moment. So much is happening within a few streets of each other, across culture, science, education, technology and research, and it still feels as though the area is evolving almost month by month. With Town Hall now open at the heart of it, it felt like the right moment to create something that could catch some of that energy and bring it together. Vision Festival is really about making space for those worlds to meet, and seeing what might happen when they do.

2. The programme brings together institutions as different as Central Saint Martins, the British Library, the Francis Crick Institute, Google and UCL. How did you turn that impressive list of partners into a coherent festival rather than simply a collection of separate events?

The coherence comes from a shared understanding of what happens when different disciplines and audiences encounter one another. Each organisation has its own identity, but collectively the programme tells a much bigger story about the ideas being generated here. 

3. Vision Festival describes itself as a collision of culture, science, ideas and live performance. Which encounter or collaboration in the first programme best captures what that “collision” can produce?

The idea of collisions producing something new sits right at the heart of Vision Festival, but also everything we do here at Town Hall. When you push at the edges of art, science, research and technology, ultimately you’re talking about creativity and the potential for what can be. These worlds already overlap in the way we live, so the festival is really about creating more opportunities for those unexpected connections to happen.

4. King’s Cross has undergone an enormous transformation and is now one of London’s most concentrated cultural and technological districts. How does the festival connect with the area’s local communities and histories, rather than speaking only to cultural professionals and major institutions?

It’s not only incredibly important to us, it’s something I’ve seen personally over the 16 years I’ve been here. I spent a long time at The Guardian, working with Argent around potential spaces and programming across the site, and later with CogX, working with many of the institutions, technology companies and community groups based here.

So from the outset, much of the Vision Festival programme has been free or accessible, and we’ve worked with the London Borough of Camden, local schools, Kings Cross Grouo, community organisations and younger audiences. We’ve also created an open call so that anyone with a space, workshop, gallery, idea or something they feel is worth showcasing can become part of the festival. As Vision Festival grows, I can only see that becoming a larger part of it.

5. Town Hall has hosted figures and events ranging from Paul Robeson and Claudia Jones to Leonard Bernstein and the St Pancras Arts Festival. How did the building’s history influence your approach to programming its new chapter?

The history gives us both inspiration and a responsibility. This building has always been a place where civic life, politics, culture, music and community have overlapped, so in many ways the programming is about returning to that spirit rather than inventing something entirely new. We want Town Hall to feel again like a place where important ideas and unexpected cultural moments can happen.

6. The programme moves between questions of attention, resilience, creativity, alternative careers and collective action. What do these subjects tell us about what audiences, particularly younger audiences, are looking for from cultural institutions now?

I think younger audiences are much less interested in traditional boundaries between culture, work, technology and personal life. They’re looking for spaces that help them understand a rapidly changing world, but also places where they can participate rather than simply be spoken to. Cultural institutions can increasingly become spaces for curiosity, connection and agency, not just consumption.

7. As this is the first edition, what would make Vision Festival feel successful to you, and how would you like it to evolve as an annual moment for King’s Cross?

This first year is deliberately a pilot, although it’s already grown rather beyond what we initially imagined. Success would be people moving around King’s Cross, discovering organisations, people and ideas they didn’t know before, and partners coming away wanting to do more together.

Longer term, I’d love more and more organisations and individuals, big and small, to co-curate, commission work, take over unusual spaces and open up all the incredible work, ideas and people that are already here.