Backstage at the Cheltenham Science Festival, there is an air of controlled chaos. People rush back and forth with papers and clipboards, or sit hammering away at laptops on low tables.
An intense young man in fashionable round sunglasses snags Donna Renney, chief executive of this and the other three festivals at the prosperous Gloucestershire town, covering jazz, music and literature, for a brief chat about sponsorship.
Outside, on the lawns of the town hall, gaggles of schoolchildren file in and out of the marquees or take in the mild summer sun. Among the attractions they can choose from are: “The Science of Toothpaste”; “Can Science Make You Happy?”; and “How To Be A Rocket Scientist.”
Inside, in the main hall, is the Discover Zone. Corporates and interested organisations, including GCHQ, vie for the attention of visitors with eye-catching practical demonstrations. There are displays about coral reefs and the behaviour of liquids. EDF Energy and its new subsidiary British Energy, which operates most of Britain’s nuclear power stations, invite passers-by to debate whether nuclear energy has a future.
Lord Winston scurries past, clutching an AppleMac laptop. He is speaking that afternoon, and will re-appear in July at the HSBC-sponsored Music Festival to discuss the madness or otherwise of composers such as Schumann, Wolf, Tchaikovsky, Ravel and Mahler.
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Ms Renney says that the role of the Science Festival, like the other three, is “to break down the barriers between performers, experts and the public”. Those attending Robert Winston’s lecture that afternoon will be able to put questions to the pioneer in the study of human fertility. Likewise, writers such as the somewhat shy and diffident Jonathan Coe will be in front of their readers at the Literature Festival in October.
This year, for the first time, the science event, which ended yesterday, was being sponsored by The Times, which already supports the literary event in October. Scientists are concerned about falling student numbers and events such as Cheltenham are a good way of inspiring those school tours. But there is a concern, Ms Renney concedes, about dumbing-down, about populist displays solely designed to pull in the crowds.
“We’re talking about engaging a public audience which may contain people with doctorates and people with no science at all,” she says. “It’s got to be good science.”
She has little scientific training herself, beyond O-levels, having spent much of her career in equestrian circles. But she is aware of the controversy that science can arouse. Her second husband, a vet, works in pharamaceuticals. “He was involved in a very difficult European court case banning an antibiotic in animal feed. I felt the public didn’t really understand any of it.”
Her first job at Cheltenham was part-time, as development manager of the Science Festival in 2001, five years before she took over the running of all four events. “It wasn’t a steep learning curve. To be development manager, you don’t have to understand the detailed science. You don’t have to understand particle physics. You just have to have a healthy interest.”
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Despite those school parties, she is keen to emphasise that the Festival attracts all ages. “People regard science as something you do in school and then it stops. When we say to people we’re running a science festival, they say, oh yes, is that for children?”
Ms Renney, 50, grew up on a farm in the West Country — “all we did was race and hunt. I was good at it as a child” — and left Worcester College with no obvious career ambitions. Her first job was in an office in Paris as a “glorified administrator. Then I got married and started riding again.”
With her mother, she set up a business in Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, teaching small children to ride. “I didn’t particularly like teaching small children, so I diversified. Lots of wealthy City people living in the Cotswolds had daughters who wanted to ride. They wanted to do eventing. I said, good, I can do that.”
She also had a business training point-to-pointers and a small livery yard. Yet in 1993 she decided to switch careers, working part-time as an academic quality administrator at Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, then gearing up to become the University of Gloucester.
“They wanted to set up a development department for fundraising and alumni relations. I set it up, with Simon Keswick as chairman.” A scion of the family that runs the Hong Kong-based Jardine Matheson, Mr Keswick was until this year chairman of Cheltenham Town Football Club. He had rented Ms Renney the yard for her equestrian business.
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“He sent me to tour American universities to see how they did fundraising. In academia, this is very closely related to fundraising in the arts.” A chance meeting sent her off to work part-time raising funds for the Workers’ Educational Association, working with ethnic minorities in Reading. Just streets away from the growing high-tech industries clustered there, she recalls, “were women who couldn’t read or write in their mother tongue, let alone English. They were not encouraged to by their families, often by their mothers-in-law.
“It was an eye-opener in late 20th-century Britain. I was shocked. We would pick them up early from their house so they could do a bit of their homework, because they were not allowed to do that at home.”
From there she moved to Cheltenham. “I was struck by how good they [the festivals] were, even though nobody knew about them. They were known in authors’ and music circles, but weren’t well-known elsewhere.”
The Music Festival was set up as a counterpoint to the postwar austerity in 1945 by Benjamin Britten, among others. Literature came four years later, Jazz in 1996 and Science in 2002. They run for 36 days between them and had been administered under the auspices of the local council. “The chief executive, such as there was, worked for the borough council,” she says. “I think we were held back by being part of the borough council. An organisation like ours needs to be independent. Borough councils aren’t set up to run festivals.”
In 2004 she became acting Head of Festivals. “You had no power to make decisions. The split with the council hadn’t happened. It felt like treading water — no, treading treacle.”
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Two years later the chief executive of the time “just decided he’d had enough. He went on sabbatical. At that point they didn’t know what to do. He was running the town hall and Pump Room and the festivals.” The festivals gained their independence.
Between 2005 and 2008 revenues from the festivals doubled to about £3.2 million, including a slug from the council to pay for overheads, but mainly from ticket sales, now about 150,000 each year. Ms Renney and her team have instituted several initiatives, as well as bringing in sponsors such as HSBC, which supports the Music Festival. They use The Centaur, a 2,200-seat venue at the nearby racecourse, which means that a much larger audience can meet the big names in literature.
Budvar, which sponsors the jazz event, provides a free stage in the gardens for casual passers-by and the chance for local musicians to compete to sit in with the professionals. “The British have a slight fear of jazz. But if they hear a few tunes, they find they like it.” They may then buy tickets to paid-for events, such as this year’s main attractions, the South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela and “punk violinist” Nigel Kennedy. Earlier years have seen artists such as Van Morrison and, in her last-ever appearance, Eartha Kitt — not names that would meet with the approval of jazz purists.
Again, as with science, there is a balance set between the popular and the orthodox. “You’ve got to give doors for people to come through.
We’re broadening it out — you’ve got to. That doesn’t mean you are going to lose what I would call hard core contemporary jazz. We want to be a bit more edgy.”
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She reflects for a moment. “We are in Cheltenham, and people don’t think of us as edgy.” The Festivals have charitable status but operate as a limited liability company.
“Arts organisations have always been and still are in a very strange place, somewhere between being a charity and a business,” she says. “My role has to be about business.” These are difficult times for such organisations trying to attract corporate cash. “For us it’s tight, yes. There are some sponsorships that we were expecting this year we haven’t got.” One big builder and a firm of solicitors have pulled out, she says. “It’s been very tough.”
She is now looking at extending the Cheltenham brand. “We could end up taking bits of it elsewhere. I think we might have satellites somewhere else.”
One option is some sort of presence in London, where events might take place, though she rules out a complete relocation from the Regency spa town.
“It will always be the Cheltenham Festivals.”
Q&A:
Who, or what, is your mentor?
My husband, David.
Does money motivate you?
Yes for the Festivals, but no, not personally.
What was the most important event in your working life?.
Being appointed chief executive of Cheltenham Festivals.
Which person or people do you most admire?
My staff.
What gadget must you have?
My Ipod.
What does leadership mean to you?
Listening to others and “kicking on” when you are terrified.
How do you relax?
Riding my horse.
Donna Renney: CV.
Born 1959.
Educated: John Bentley Grammar School, Calne; North Gloucester College; Worcester College.
1982 - 97: Own business — event rider and point-to-point trainer.
1993 - 1999: Part-time, Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education.
2000 - 2002: Part-time fund-raiser, Workers’ Educational Association.
2001 - 2003: Part-time development manager, Cheltenham Science Festival.
2003 - 2004: Development manager, festivals.
2004 - 2006: Acting head of festivals.
2006 - present: Chief executive, Cheltenham Festivals.