Antonia Byatt departs Cheltenham Festivals during job consultations

Cheltenham Festivals is restructuring its business to make cost savings, resulting in job consultations and the departure of literature festival director Antonia Byatt after less than a year in the role.

An email from Cheltenham Festivals' chief executive Louise Emerson to the Literature Festival Advisory Board said the business had to make a number of “operational efficiencies” and was restructuring to meet a “much tighter financial budget and smaller core staff ” over the next two years.  

The business operates four festivals: Jazz, Science, Music and Literature and is in a period of consultation with staff, but could not confirm how many roles are at risk of redundancy when asked by The Bookseller. However, the business confirmed The Times and The Sunday Times are still title sponsors of the literature festival and there has been no cut in sponsorship from the newspapers' owner News UK.

In a statement, Emerson said the organisation was having to make some “hard decisions” because it wants to diversify to engage more of the next generation to the festivals.

As a result, the business is merging some roles and creating some new ones so that it could “benefit from skills and experience across the organisation,” Emerson said.  

“It is with very great regret that as part of this cost saving plan Antonia Byatt, our literature festival director, is leaving us at the end of January,” she added.

Byatt joined Cheltenham Festivals on 18th January 2016 from her position as director of literature and south east at Arts Council England.

Emerson said: “In 2017 Cheltenham Festivals will be laying the foundations to make our diverse and high quality events and activities accessible to an even wider group of people and to engage more of the next generation in science and the arts.

“To do that we are making some changes to give us space to develop new ideas and diversify our funding streams. As a member of our senior management team, Antonia Byatt contributed to looking at options for change. We are creating some new roles in the organisation and merging some roles so that we can benefit from skills and experience across the organisation.

“Although we will need to make some hard decisions, these changes will leave us stronger in 2017 and give us the room we need to develop our plans.”