The academic behind a pioneering student-run festival that has attracted some of the biggest names in the arts world over the last 21 years is to retire from De Montfort University Leicester (DMU).
Tony Graves, Subject Leader of DMU’s Arts and Festivals Management course, came up with the idea of calling the event Cultural eXchanges and launched it in 2001.
Tony in his office in Clephan Building
It is very much a part of the cultural fabric of Leicester, celebrating diversity in the arts, and is unique in the way that Arts and Festivals Management students organise the events, with marks going towards their degree.
The festival has attracted hundreds of guests over the years including journalist and campaigner Paris Lees, Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry, poet and activist Benjamin Zephaniah, artist David Shrigley and the late music entrepreneur and youth ambassador Jamal Edwards.
Tony says celebrating the arts, combined with students experiencing ‘real-life learning’, all stemmed from the opening of the Clephan Building at the turn of the century.
“We were moving into Clephan and the Dean of the Faculty, Judy Simons, wanted a week of events to celebrate the opening,” he explains.
“It was called Clephan Events Week and then staff were asked if anyone else wanted to take it on the following year. I volunteered, changed the name and Cultural eXchanges was born in 2001.
The first Cultural eXchanges brochure from 2001
“It was a modest festival showcasing the academics and their subjects with some visiting lecturers and artists. It was then that we conceived the idea of making it part of a student module and offering that idea of real-life learning.
“It was a pioneering module and the only one in the country at the time - and still is I think - in which students organise everything within a festival as part of their course.
“The diversity of the festival is something I am proud of. People come out of their comfort zones and open their minds to new ideas and new ways of thinking. Our guests are not some kind of sideshow. Cultural eXxchanges is about discovering who people are and what they do and the audience embraces that.
“The arts is seen as very liberal and all-embracing but there are still areas that need to be opened up. That political element of Cultural eXchanges, with a small ‘p’, is important. It reflects Leicester as a city and hopefully it embraces what Leicester can be and is.”
Tony’s life at DMU actually started as a student on the Arts Management course at the former Scraptoft Campus, under the tutorage of Chris Maughan who Tony says was instrumental in developing his career.
Another person Tony got to know while studying was Geoff Rowe, founder of the internationally-renowned Leicester Comedy Festival.
“Geoff was in the same year as me. For our final year projects Geoff was working next door on the Leicester Comedy Festival and I was working on an Arts Training Directory for the East Midlands.
Artist David Shrigley and his distinctive deadpan work at CeX
Tony laughs saying: “Our group was being all virtuous and the other group was having enormous fun. All you could hear from next door was laughter and giggles and we were there saying ‘that’s never going to work’.
“Look how that turned out!”
Geoff and Tony remained close and students from the Arts and Festivals Management course have regularly organised events for the comedy festival, taking charge of everything from running the venue to ticketing and looking after artists.
Fittingly, Geoff Rowe held the Leicester Comedy Festival Awards in February and Tony was honoured with a lifetime achievement award.
“It felt amazing,” Tony says. “I am using a cliché here but I was gobsmacked. They got me there under false pretences to make sure I was going to collect my award.
“Towards the end of the event a speech written by Geoff was read out which said the Lifetime Achievement award was going to the person he has known for the longest time in Leicester. It was then that I put two and two together.
“I may have received the award but it really acknowledges the students and staff who have given so much support over the years.”
Campaigner and Journalist Paris Lees at CeX
Tony graduated from DMU in 1994 and was working freelance at Nottingham Playhouse, putting on shows and overseeing various other projects, when Mr Maughan called and said there was a post available on the course.
Since then hundreds of students have taken part in the annual Cultural eXchanges Festival and gone on to employment in arts organisations around the world.
Tony said: “I will miss DMU because the people are fantastic. This is across the board. Not just students and academics. People in Post and Porterage, Security and so on. The one thing they all have in common is they are part of a community and I will miss that.
“My first love is to interact with the community and introduce the arts to help change people’s lives. It is something our course always tries to do. I want to continue doing that.
“I am looking at a project with the actor David Harewood, following his visit to DMU for the last Cultural eXxchanges, to use the arts to help people who may have fallen through the cracks, so to speak. I am not going to be just pottering around the garden.”
Tony’s Top Seven Guests
Benjamin Zephaniah – He is an incredible artist and someone I have admired for a long time. He was so relaxed and accommodating and very generous with his time for the students. He has gone on to be someone associated with DMU. The students meeting someone like that was great. It had a transformative effect.
Janet Street-Porter – I remember her because it was the first time there was a sense of ‘we can get some really well-known public figures involved’. Janet had just come out of the jungle in I’m A Celebrity so was very high profile and of course could talk about life as a newspaper editor. It really raised the bar for our ambitions and really caught the imagination.
Grayson Perry – Grayson was a Turner Prize winner and just as charismatic as he was on the TV and the buzz that went around the campus was extraordinary when we said he was coming to give a talk. Chatting to him in the Green Room before his event was so memorable
Meera Syall - The back-story to her is ‘if at first you don’t succeed…..’ as pretty much for about six years I would try and invite her to the festival without any success. I decided to give it one more try and she said yes, which felt a bit like winning the lottery.
Melvyn Bragg – He wanted to meet students afterwards in the pub so I asked one of our students to take charge and make sure he did not miss his train. I was at home and I got a phone call from the student to say the taxi had not arrived. I jumped in the car and went as fast as I could to pick up Melvyn Bragg and get him to the station. As I pulled up to the pub I dashed out of the car - which then started rolling backwards – and ran up to Melvyn and the shock on his face…he said he thought he was going to be mugged. So all pretty chaotic…but he caught his train
Jamal Edwards – Jamal has visited Cultural Exchanges twice and I saw the amazing effect he had on the students around him. He really understood what we were trying to do and attracted a whole new demographic to the festival. People felt they were not just coming into an academic setting but were attending an event that would capture their imagination.
Ken Loach – His talk was extraordinary. Sitting and talking to this great film director after the event was one of those really surreal moments.
Posted on Tuesday 24 May 2022