Managing a festival’s scope is a delicate balancing act. In the excitement of planning, it’s easy for scope creep to set in – those extra ideas and add-ons that sneak into your event when you’re not looking. The world’s most seasoned festival producers know that great festivals, whether in the United States, Mexico, India, or Australia, have something in common: they know their shape. They have clear boundaries on what they will and won’t do. This clarity protects the core experience and ensures that every element of the festival is executed to a high standard.
Scope creep control is about making tough choices and sticking to them. It’s deciding that less can be more – that a well-curated, comfortable festival experience beats an overstretched one every time. Whether you’re organizing a boutique art festival in a European city or a massive music festival on an Australian farm, the principles remain the same. In the end, depth beats breadth in cultural work. Let’s explore how to keep your festival focused and thriving by clearly defining its scope and guarding against bloat.
Decide What You Won’t Do (As Clearly As What You Will)
The first step to controlling scope creep is defining the festival’s boundaries. That means articulating not only what your festival will include, but also what it will exclude. This might feel counterintuitive – as a festival producer, you’re likely brimming with ideas and opportunities. However, being explicit about what you won’t do is a hallmark of strategic planning. As an oft-cited wisdom from the business world goes, “I’m as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done” (issuu.com). In festival terms, this translates to having the discipline to say no to elements that don’t serve your festival’s core mission or that you can’t execute flawlessly.
Start with a clear scope statement during your planning phase. Outline the festival’s primary objectives, target audience, and key programming content. Equally important, list the tempting extras that you will consciously avoid – at least for this edition of the event. For example, if you’re producing a folk music festival, you might decide not to add other genres like EDM or hip-hop this year, keeping the focus on folk and acoustic acts. If you’re running a local food and wine festival, you might exclude unrelated entertainment like carnival rides or tech expos that don’t align with your theme. By deciding these boundaries early, you prevent well-meaning suggestions from derailing your plan later on.
Being clear about what you won’t do also helps manage stakeholder expectations. Share these “non-goals” with your team, sponsors, and partners. When everyone knows that, say, “we won’t be adding a second stage” or “we’re not doing overnight camping”, it’s easier to push back on requests that fall outside the plan. This transparency protects your festival from growing beyond its means. It ensures every yes has a purpose, and every no keeps you on track. In practice, seasoned festival organizers often keep a “Not To-Do List” pinned on the wall right next to their to-do list. It’s a daily reminder that focus is a choice, and sometimes choosing what not to pursue is what saves your event.
Limit Disciplines to What You Can Fund and Execute Well
Festivals often celebrate multiple disciplines – music, art, film, food, technology, and more. Mixed-format festivals can be wonderful celebrations of culture, but each discipline added is a festival in itself. Every additional component (a film showcase, a culinary village, a yoga workshop series, etc.) requires its own budget, expertise, and logistics. One of the wisest moves a festival producer can make is to limit the festival’s scope to the disciplines and activities that you can truly support and execute at a high quality. It’s better to deliver one or two aspects brilliantly than five aspects poorly.
History shows that the most successful multi-disciplinary festivals grew gradually and intentionally. Look at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas – it started primarily as a music festival in 1987, and only after several years of success did it add film and interactive media segments (the SXSW Film Festival began in 1994) (m.global.ssl.fastly.net). SXSW’s team expanded into new areas only when they had the resources, expertise, and community support to do it right. Similarly, Glastonbury Festival in the UK evolved over decades from a humble music gathering into a sprawling event featuring music, dance, theatre, and circus arts – but each expansion was carefully planned and supported by an ever-growing infrastructure. These giants illustrate a key lesson: don’t try to be “Jack of All Trades” in your first (or even fifth) year. Build a solid foundation in your primary discipline, then expand slowly and deliberately.
For practical planning, take a hard look at your budget and team skills before introducing a new festival element. Let’s say you run a successful indie music festival in New Zealand and you’re considering adding a small film component. Ask yourself: do you have the funds for proper film projection equipment, licensing rights, and a suitable venue? Do you have team members experienced in running film screenings or panels? If not, it might be wise to hold off, or partner with a local film society to co-produce that segment. The same goes for adding food or craft markets, comedy stages, or any other discipline. Each should only be added if you can ensure quality control and a positive experience around it.
Remember, every additional discipline complicates logistics exponentially. More stages or sections mean more scheduling headaches, more soundchecks, more vendor contracts, and often completely different attendee expectations. A festival in Singapore learned this when trying to combine a tech conference with a music festival in one weekend – the team found themselves overstretched, as each track required unique marketing and operations. The next year, they smartly chose to focus on one track and executed it seamlessly, rebuilding their reputation. The bottom line: choose your festival’s content areas with care, and don’t be afraid to stay narrower in scope, especially in early years. Delivering a superb, focused program will always leave a better impression than an average, muddled one.
Use a “Nice-to-Have” Backlog Instead of Last-Minute Adds
No matter how well you plan, creative ideas will pop up as the festival date approaches. Perhaps a sponsor offers an activation opportunity, a local artist suggests a cool installation, or your team suddenly dreams up a fun new attendee activity. These ideas can be enticing – sometimes they’re genuinely great! However, last-minute additions are a classic source of scope creep. Implementing new features on the fly can strain your budget, stress your staff, and introduce avoidable risks. The solution is to capture these ideas in a “nice-to-have backlog” for future consideration, instead of impulsively adding them to this year’s festival at the eleventh hour.
Think of your backlog as a parking lot for promising ideas. During the planning cycle, whenever someone says “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we added X to the festival?”, you evaluate the idea and if it’s not feasible now, park it on the backlog list. For instance, if a month before your film festival someone proposes a virtual reality experience lounge, it might sound fantastic for attendee engagement. But adding it last-minute would require equipment rental, content curation, and technical staff that weren’t budgeted. Rather than rushing in and risking a half-baked execution, note it down as an idea for next year’s edition. This way it’s not lost – it’s just saved for when you can do it properly.
Using a backlog requires discipline but pays off. It forces you to distinguish between must-haves and nice-to-haves. An idea that truly aligns with your festival’s core mission and can be resourced might still make the cut (with proper planning and maybe a contingency budget). Everything else gets deferred gracefully. Communicate this approach to your stakeholders as well. If a partner or VIP pushes a pet idea close to the event – for example, adding a minor stage for an extra local band – explain that all new ideas at this stage go into a backlog for future evaluation. Most will understand that this policy exists to protect the quality of the festival. It’s far better to launch a new feature at the next festival with full funding and planning than to cram it in now and risk it falling flat.
To manage this backlog, keep it visible. It can be as simple as a shared document or as formal as a project management tool tracking potential features for upcoming festivals. After your event, review the list in your debrief. Some ideas might not seem as brilliant after the fact, while others will still shine and can be incorporated into next year’s planning from the get-go. Adopting a “nice-to-have” backlog mindset turns scope creep from a threat into a structured source of inspiration for the future. It lets you stay agile and open to innovation without compromising the current festival.
Protect Artist Care and Audience Comfort Over Bloat
When festivals try to do too much, often the first things to suffer are the basics – the behind-the-scenes and infrastructure elements that actually make an event enjoyable and safe. Extra programming and flashy additions mean nothing if your artists are unhappy or your audience is uncomfortable. A veteran festival producer will tell you that artist hospitality, safety, and attendee comfort should never be sacrificed for the sake of “more stuff.” In other words, secure the foundation before you build the castle.
Budget and time are finite, so allocate them to the essentials first. This includes sufficient facilities (toilets, water, shelter, medical services), well-rested and well-briefed security and staff, solid backstage arrangements for performers, and reliable transportation/logistics. These elements are not as sexy as booking another band or adding a neon art installation, but they are absolutely critical for a successful festival. History has taught hard lessons on this front: the infamous Woodstock ‘99 festival suffered major issues because organizers prioritized scale and big-name lineups over attendee well-being. Basic needs were overlooked – water was insanely overpriced and eventually even the free water turned unsafe due to poor sanitation, leaving people feeling “like animals” amid health hazards (english.elpais.com) (english.elpais.com). The result? A public relations nightmare and a tarnished legacy. The takeaway is clear: never let festival bloat compromise fundamental comforts.
On the flip side, festivals that put artist and audience care at the center earn long-term loyalty. Imagine a three-day cultural festival in Singapore that opts to cap its tickets at a lower number than the venue maximum, to ensure everyone has room to dance, short queues for food, and easy access to water stations. That may mean not selling an extra 5,000 tickets (and forgoing that revenue), but the payoff is that attendees have a great experience and are more likely to return next year. Similarly, a music festival in Germany might decide not to add a fourth music stage because it would stretch the site’s infrastructure too far – instead, they invest that budget into better camping facilities and extra showers for guests. These are the kind of decisions that protect the integrity of your event. Artists, too, notice when a festival takes care of them. Providing adequate green rooms, sticking to the schedule, and ensuring tech setups are smooth will make performers eager to come back in future editions. One fewer stage or attraction is a small trade-off if it keeps your core talent happy and your audience safe and satisfied.
As you plan, regularly ask: “If we add this, what do we risk taking away from attendee comfort or artist care?” If the honest answer is that it would cause cutbacks in crucial areas like security, sanitation, or stage crew efficiency, then you know that addition is not worth it. Maintain a margin of error in your budget and schedule for the unglamorous stuff (like extra toilet paper, cleaning crews, or a backup sound technician on standby). These may seem like small details, but they are precisely what prevents minor issues from snowballing into show-stoppers. At the end of the day, a festival will be remembered for how it felt more than how much it had. Prioritize the comfort and safety that allow everyone – artists and attendees alike – to fully enjoy the experience.
Depth Beats Breadth in Cultural Work
In the realm of cultural festivals, there’s a saying that meaningful impact comes from depth, not breadth. Festivals are, at their heart, about creating a space for connection, inspiration, and memory-making. You achieve that by digging deep into your festival’s identity and purpose, not by trying to simply make it bigger or more varied for its own sake. In practical terms, focusing on depth means curating high-quality content and experiences that resonate strongly with your audience and community. It’s the art of doing a few things extraordinarily well, rather than many things superficially.
Across the globe, we see a growing trend of niche and specialty festivals that embrace this philosophy. Rather than appealing to everyone, they double down on a particular culture, genre, or theme – and often find greater success because of it. For example, niche music and art festivals have been on the rise precisely because they offer unique, personalized experiences for a dedicated audience (www.thefestivalcompany.com). A festival like Wacken Open Air in Germany caters almost exclusively to heavy metal fans and has become one of the world’s most renowned in that genre, drawing loyal attendees from over 80 countries. Its power lies in the depth of its connection to metal music culture – everything from the lineup to the onsite experience is crafted for that community. Similarly, classical music festivals, jazz festivals (like the long-running Montreal Jazz Festival in Canada), or folk culture festivals (such as the Rainforest World Music Festival in Malaysia) thrive by celebrating a specific cultural thread in great depth. They don’t dilute their programming with unrelated content; instead, they explore and present their chosen niche from every angle, be it through performances, workshops, or interactive sessions.
Even large multi-genre festivals can apply the “depth over breadth” mindset by maintaining quality and cohesion in each area. The key is cultural authenticity and coherence. If you are running a cultural festival in, say, India that celebrates regional heritage, depth might mean featuring not just a token dance performance from that region, but building an immersive environment around it – authentic food, craft demos, storytelling sessions, and community elders sharing history. It means the whole festival tells a story and invites attendees to dive in. Trying to add an eclectic mix (just for the sake of variety – like also throwing in a trending pop act unrelated to the theme) could actually weaken the narrative and impact. Attendees leave with stronger impressions when they’ve learned or felt something profound about the culture or theme at hand.
From a producer’s standpoint, choosing depth means investing in quality: quality of production, content, and engagement. It might involve training your staff or volunteers in cultural sensitivity, spending extra time curating artists who truly fit your festival’s vision, or designing spaces that facilitate more meaningful interactions (for example, lounge areas for artists and audience to mingle in discussion at a film festival, or intimate workshop tents at a dance festival where masters teach the craft). These efforts create richer experiences. They might limit the quantity of acts or attractions you can present, but what you do present will have a lasting influence on your audience.
Ultimately, depth over breadth is about remembering why you produce festivals in the first place: to celebrate and share culture in a way that moves people. A focused, well-shaped festival that leaves attendees inspired or transformed in some way will always outshine a sprawling mega-event that leaves people feeling scattered or overwhelmed.
Key Takeaways
- Define Your Festival’s Shape Early: Clearly outline what your festival will and won’t include. This clarity helps prevent scope creep and keeps everyone from your team to stakeholders aligned on the vision.
- Focus on What You Can Do Well: Limit the festival’s content to disciplines and activities that you have the resources to execute with high quality. It’s better to have a brilliant, focused program than a diluted, over-extended one.
- Park Ideas for Later: Instead of squeezing in last-minute additions, maintain a “nice-to-have” backlog of ideas. This way you can innovate in future editions without jeopardizing the current festival’s stability and polish.
- Prioritize Basics Over Addition: Always ensure artist hospitality, attendee comfort, and safety are fully covered before considering new features. Never trade essential amenities or crew capacity for extra “bells and whistles.”
- Depth Over Breadth: Aim for a festival experience that goes deep into its cultural or thematic purpose. Engaging your audience on a meaningful level with well-curated content will beat a catch-all approach. A strong identity and quality engagement create lasting impact and loyalty.
25th August 2025