What does it take to run a student art festival?

We’re not sure, so we decided to ask someone who would know! Erika Dovey, a third-year history student at Queens’, is the president of this year’s Queens’ Arts Festival - the largest college arts event in Cambridge. I sat down with Erika at Espresso Lane on a Tuesday afternoon to talk about her role as President.

Photographed by Erika Dovey

So, what made you want to get involved in the festival? 

I was involved with it last year, on the events committee, and obviously with everything that happened with COVID in first year, I wasn’t really involved in anything outside of college. The President of Queens’ has to be a student from Queens’ - Pri took over last year, and when she reached out to me and asked “do you want to do it together?” I said, “yeah that sounds great!”. But why I wanted to do it: in the future I want to work in the museum sector and curation, with a particular interest in utilising the community in museums, so, reaching out to local schools and local businesses, working with materials and knowledge that already exist, and that’s why I chose the theme of ‘Bricolage’, ‘assemblage’ and drawing from everyday objects etc. for the festival (...) I wanted to highlight those aspects of the festival which are working with the community and not just Cambridge students. 

What would you say has been the greatest challenge about your role, so far? 

I think… mostly sticking to deadlines (...). It’s actually the boring stuff that’s the hardest, (...) just making sure everything happens in time, emailing people - I’m not very good at that - but then it’s quite a nice antidote to work, so when I don’t want to do my work, I’m like, “okay, just answer your emails instead”. Speaking to [people in] local cafés and the chaplain at Queens’ (...), that’s the part I really enjoy - talking with people, discussing ideas. I think, at the beginning submissions were slow to come in, but we’re now almost at 50/50 submissions between Cambridge students and students from Cambridge Performing Arts (...). Obviously, that’s their full-time degree, so people are doing a performing arts degree or a textiles degree, and it’s work that they’ve done as projects. Recently, someone submitted a detailed PowerPoint of how they got from A to B in their work for example, whereas Cambridge students maybe don’t have as much time, because it’s an add-on. 

And following on from that, what have been your favourite parts of the role? 

Broadly, the opportunity to have a project of your own, and I think one of the reasons I was really eager to be part of QAF and just things in Cambridge in general is that, when you go into the field of curation, there are really big names, people with loads of experience, you have to sort of work your way up, and so you have to make your own projects. It’s quite difficult to get onto projects, I’ve tried to apply for internships and get work experience in galleries, but it is quite difficult, because normally they want people with a degree or a masters’ degree, so it’s really nice to have a project of your own where you can sort of dictate the theme, the artist, what you want to do, and really have that space to be creative. What else do I enjoy? (…) Looking at the space and then, I guess, actually putting the objects or pieces on the wall, thinking about where we want them, and collaborating with local businesses. I’m excited about the Art Trail - hopefully that goes ahead - I think that could be really interesting to have the art not just within the walls of Queens’ but also around Cambridge, places that I normally go to. 

So, would you recommend it to people interested in running the festival next year? And, if so, what would your biggest piece of advice be? 

Yeah, I would definitely recommend doing it. I think what I said before, about how it can feel like there are a lot of barriers to getting into this field (...) I think that [for] anyone who wants to, this is a really good opportunity, and so, I was actually talking to a girl who came to the collage event yesterday, and I was saying to her, we need people to take it on next year, and so when the call comes out to get on the committee, do it. And if you’ve got any ideas, just say them and do them, because I don’t come from an art history background (...) up until recently, it’s been more of a hobby for me - going to exhibitions, reading journals - so I don’t have any formal training, and so I would think, “oh, my idea isn’t backed up by knowledge.” But really, when it comes to creativity, I don’t think there are qualifications you need. 

Who is your favourite artist and why? 
I think that’s quite a hard question… I probably couldn’t think of one…

What about, like, a few? 

I think I go through phases of people I find interesting. I think, because I do history, I’m not always just attached to the art itself, I’m attached to the story and the context. So, right now, there’s a lot on the news about Yayoi Kusama because she’s done a collaboration with Louis Vuitton which has raised many questions on the agency of Kusama. Has she authorised this project? I think it raises interesting questions on the commoditisation of art, sometimes at the expense of the artist's desires or vision. 

I actually have been reading a lot about her and I find her work really interesting, and obviously a lot of people know her from the Infinity Rooms in the Tate, and that’s become quite an ‘Instagrammable’, aesthetic thing that people really enjoy. But the lights, mirrors and dots have actually come from (…) hallucinations and that’s a way for her to ground herself when she’s experiencing those moments and the repetitiveness of drawing the dots also allowed her to do that. That’s why there’s a lot of repetitive work. And I also find it really interesting how she has experienced (...) a lot of her friends taking her work, a lot of men in the field, adopting her work and not giving her credit, but in the end she has triumphed. A lot of the techniques she’s used, like soft fabric sculptures and dots, have become what she is known for, whereas, if you looked about twenty years ago, those would've been attributed to the men that were copying her. 

Oh, right, I really didn’t know that! That’s really cool.

I find her really interesting, and her relationship with Georgia O’Keefe, who’s one of my other favourite artists. 

Oh yeah, she is really cool! And, so, leading on from that, the final question: what is the best art exhibition that you have seen recently?

So, another sort of reason why I’m quite interested in Yayoi Kusama is because my mum’s Japanese and obviously she [Kusama] is a Japanese artist. I recently went back [to Japan] for the first time in four years because of COVID, and I went to an exhibition at Mori Arts [in Tokyo]. I think it was called “Roppongi Crossing” and it was a triennial exhibition exploring cultural meeting points in Japan that were shaping society. I found it interesting because I think Japan is quite a conservative country in a lot of ways, but a lot of the topics were discussing climate change, the LGBTQ+ community, and the sort of things that people would refrain from discussing, yet in the museum space there was a lot of work sort of touching on those. I think that, to me, is one of the reasons why I want to go into this in the future, because it gives a space to talk about topics that people don’t want to bring up, or don’t know how to approach, or can’t put into words.  

Thanks Erika. This year’s festival will be running from the 1st – 5th March at Queens’ College, with its launch event taking place at the end of February. Come along, support student artists, and learn something new!