EVERY year the Salisbury International Arts Festival team put on a packed programme for audiences of all ages to enjoy but what goes into organising such a huge event?

Festival director Toby Smith reveals all and talks about the inspiration for the 2016 festival.

"Lots of thought, huge energy and much hard graft [goes into planning of the festival]. The festival team is small, utterly committed and goes the extra mile to create a celebration for all of Salisbury that is a sum far greater than its many parts. Besides creating the programme, we are constantly thinking about how we can fund it, and from where that money might come, and who will come to each event and how we might reach them. It’s like completely a complex 3D jigsaw each year."

The 16-day event takes audiences on a journey to the southern hemisphere and takes a look at the arts and culture of New Zealand.

Toby explains more about the inspiration for the New-Zealand themed programme. "Many of my relations on my father’s side live in New Zealand, and so I’ve visited that country many times over the years, since I was a little kid.

"Then at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years ago I was lucky enough to see a performance by one of New Zealand’s leading Kapa Haka groups that showcased Maori traditional arts. Besides bringing back many warm, childhood memories, I started to seek out work by New Zealand artists, and little by little this year’s spotlight on that country came into focus."

"I started this year’s programme in August 2014, with detailed planning from March 2015. Some events take well over a year to plan – working with an orchestra, or an opera company for instance - yet there are other parts of the programme, like our literature speakers, that sometimes are not finalised until the final days before we sign off the festival brochure."

When asked how the 2016 programme compares to last year, he said: "It’s always different, but that is the festival’s absolute strength I think. We have a few shows running over multiple nights this year, which I always look forward to - some joyous dancing on the roof of the Old George Mall car park, a boy-meets-girl romance played out on the dancefloor of the Chapel Nightclub, and a fable about the power of books set in the old library at Longleat."

Last year, the festival celebrated the arts from the Middle East.

Asked what the first thing that has to be done when organising such a big event, he says: "You need to keep your head… you need to keep arrangements flexible enough to allow ideas to develop organically and over a natural time-scale; and you also need to recognise when is the time to make the final artistic decisions that need to be taken."

"The challenge is in finding a way to allow the programme to take shape at absolutely the same time that we are fundraising to make it possible.

"Few people know that we are a registered charity and every penny we earn is ploughed back into making the programme possible.

"We have to find £400,000 from scratch each year, and it is really hard these days to achieve that. It’s a constant worry and we have to let a lot of things go, and take a huge leap of faith each year that everything will work out. It isn’t for the faint-hearted!

Explaining what he enjoys most about putting the festival together, Toby adds: "Above all else, speaking to the audience about what they have seen, whether that’s a free show on the city’s streets or a concert in the Cathedral or in one of our glorious churches. Everybody takes something unique from experiencing a live performance, and so there is always something to learn from whatever people have to say."

The festival team is already looking ahead to the 2017 Salisbury International Arts Festival programme, as Toby explains: "We’ve started on the basic planning, although we are pressing ‘pause’ over these next months as we focus on delivering this year’s festival."