Happy LIFT-mas, everyone!  On the first day of LIFT-mas, my festival gave to me......

One telephone.

 

In this age of technology, we're all used to being in constant contact with the outside world, but in the earliest days of LIFT HQ, we operated with just one phone and one typewriter!

In an extract from 'The Turning World', LIFT founders Rose and Lucy tell us of the very first days.....

 

"At times it was almost as if we were playing at offices, with an endless supply of clipboards in place of desks in an increasingly packed one-room office.  A press photo of LIFT’s three organisers showed us gathered around an IBM golfball typewriter, of which we were inordinately proud.  We had one telephone – inconceivable in an age of email, mobile and faxes.  Getting 150 artists into London from South America, Malaysia, Eastern and Western Europe with one phone was a feat in itself, not to mention phone calls to London theatres to arrange production schedules and publicity.  ‘We are terrified’, we wrote in our monthly update to the Trustees, ‘that there are people becoming infuriated at not being able to get through to us, or simply losing initial interest in the Festival because the phone is constantly engaged….. Important journalists have given up trying to contact us to write about the Festival because they have failed to get through all day.’"