ICMP's Izzy Eddies to return to work at Wilderness Festival

ICMP Music Business and Entrepreneurship student Izzy Eddies will be returning to work at Wilderness Festival in summer 2023. 

Taking place over August in Oxfordshire, the event will welcome the Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and Christine and the Queens for a weekend of music, arts, food and more. 

Izzy’s role this year will be as Programming Assistant so working with agents and programmers. She worked for Live Nation and Festival Republic across multiple events over the course of summer of 2022, including Creamfields South and Creamfields North after tutor Jamie Johnston and the ICMP Music Business Faculty facilitated an introduction to the team. 

Ahead of this year's event, we caught up with Izzy to find out more on her role, how she found it and how she is taking on more ICMP students to work in events.  

What does your job at Wilderness this year involve? 

So far, within a year, I’ve had three different roles at Wilderness. This year, however, I’m the Programming Assistant so my days are full of conversations with agents and programmers, liaising with artists, and constantly chasing *nagging* everyone for information. It’s allowed me to actually book some ICMP students onto our stages though so that’s been quite full circle (see CHRLI and Liv Sommer at the Boutique stage at Wilderness 2023!).

The role changes quite a lot on site so that’s going to be interesting to experience. From what I know, myself and my manager Charley will be moving from venue to venue ensuring everyone’s happy and praying that we’ve ordered enough alcohol for every stage - so I’m really excited to do that.

There’s so many details to what we do that I can’t actually talk about everything.

For some perspective, the to-do list is currently 201 lines of a spreadsheet, we have 29 different stages/areas to organise and we’re about two weeks out from moving to site so everyone’s in slight panic mode at the minute but everything is seemingly going to plan - knock on wood."

How have your studies helped you land this opportunity? 

I mean I wouldn’t have this job if it wasn’t for ICMP! I remember sending a very emotional email to Jamie after the season thanking him for suggesting me - the dramatics were very boosted as I was running on pure exhaustion but I was (and still am) very grateful to have had the opportunity in the first place.

From the ages of 14-17 I wanted to work in the live industry (I actually have a diary entry from when I was 15 stating that I wanted to work for Festival Republic/Live Nation.) The initial idea of working in live came about because of a One Direction obsession which I will wholeheartedly admit to, I wanted to work in live events purely so I could meet Harry Styles (I haven’t yet but I’m working on it). 

When I started studying Sound Engineering at college though and began going to gigs in the local scene in Birmingham I became more fascinated with the logistical side and emotional effect live events have within communities. This spiralled and I decided to move to London to study.

When I moved to uni I was more focused on landing a job at a label or artist management agency as I thought that would provide me with more stability - it probably would - but as soon as I relaxed into site life and the long hours I fell in love with festivals."

I think my whole ‘career’ so far, if you can call it that, has been based on calculated decisions, talking to the right people and luck; moving to London relying purely on a loan, going to a music uni, moving to Essex for four weeks without any knowledge on what the job was, talking to the right person at the right time. 

With your role, you are now recruiting more ICMP students? Who has joined your team?

There are always jobs coming up in events because there are loads of little jobs that need to be done. I hired many of my friends last year at the very last minute because they were people who were a.) available and b.) I knew were trustworthy.

This year at Wilderness I suggested Jaycee Keeney as the Licensing Assistant, who got the role, Killian Glemas who is one of our lead Artist Liaisons on The Smudge venue and I’ve hired a few ex-ICMP students within the programming department. As I said I’ve also booked a few students as performers as well!

Visit wildernessfestival.com for more information. You can connect with Izzie on Instagram.