In late 2011 I visited a labyrinth of disused tunnels under Waterloo Station, hopeful of finding somewhere to present two projects by Silent Opera and Kiln Theatre back to back. I headed a small team that attracted 7500 people to that first twelve-day festival in February 2012.

Andy George joined the team in 2014 and very quickly he, Mat Burt and I transformed the festival into a confident, professional few years of growth and optimisation. We found steering groups, expanded our volunteer programs, began programming other spaces, and became, well, you know, grownups. In its first six years VAULT invited a total of over eight hundred groups of artists to perform for north of 150,000 ticket buyers. I was Festival Director until mid 2018.

VAULT is now a firm fixture in London’s cultural calendar that hundreds of artists have woven into their yearly cycle of activity. With an essentially unfunded model that should make other festivals blush, we generated more than £1.5m of box office revenues that’s gone directly into artists pockets.