Talking The Beating Heart Of ESNS With Managing Director Anna Van Nunen

Anna van Nunen took over as managing director of ESNS in Groningen, Netherlands, at the beginning of this year, joining the team with extensive experience in the festival world, and significant knowledge of innovation and sustainability.

Van Nunen is the founder of Innofest, a platform enabling businesses to trial their sustainability innovations at Dutch festivals. She also helped Greener Power Solutions, a pioneer in clean mobile battery power at events, scale in European as the startup’s commercial director. Van Nunen is also the founder of lobbying platform Ik Lobby, and actively participates as a keynote speaker, panelist, and moderator at events such as ESNS, Amsterdam Dance Event, and Dutch Design Week.

Having grown up frequenting Groningen’s pop venues Vera and Simplon, Van Nunen had ESNS marked in her calendar long before taking an active role in it. Pollstar reached out to her ahead of the 39th edition of ESNS, Jan 15-18, to learn how she’s found a way to evolve the event, while remaining true to its core mission of bringing together the best talent in Europe with the best people to take their careers to the next level.

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Pollstar: Since you’ve taken over as managing director of ESNS, what have been some milestones you’re proud of?
Anna van Nunen: A large part of my role at ESNS is rethinking what we’re all about. Since COVID, costs of touring and putting on events have been rising a lot, which will be a topic at the conference, by the way. This caused us to remember our core mission, and what the beating heart of ESNS has always been: at the end of the day, we are here to present a diverse and relevant scope of European artists, and give all of them the opportunity to have a good showcase, maybe a breakthrough showcase, in front of relevant people. It may sound trivial, but it really distinguishes us from other festivals, where the general visitors are the target audience. You want to entertain them, and make them happy.

How has ESNS changed over the past years?
The European artists we’ve come to represent in the past years have become increasingly diverse, in terms of genres, but also the artists’ backgrounds. That is something we would like to hold on to. The other important target audience to focus on are the delegates. Because if they are not in Groningen in January, an artist can have a fantastic show, but no one from the industry’s there to see it, no label, no media recording, no bookers. With that in mind, we started to think about what we really need to focus on, while considering what had become a nice-to-have in recent years.

Is it working, and, if so, how does it show?
What I’m particularly proud of is that at least half of our delegates, bookers, festival organizers, labels and publishers arrive on Wednesday, and usually head straight to the Oosterpoort to get their wristbands. So, we started thinking about ways to present them with talent right from the get-go, and also keep them on site. We completely redesigned the Wednesday, which now starts with a couple of showcases from our partners, including the music export office of Italy, which is also the focus country in 2025, as well as Marshall.

You can arrive at the Oosterpoort, and don’t have to leave again to catch a showcase at Vera or the Huize Maas, walking through the usual rainy January weather. So, for the first time in ESNS’s history, you can see all of the 30-plus acts performing at ESNS on the Wednesday under one roof. The idea is, that as as a delegate coming all the way from Slovenia or Portugal, you can get started instantly. We’re hoping to achieve the same vibe delegates have come to expect of the Saturday, when we organize Noorderslag, which is always so much fun. We hope we will achieve the same vibe there on the Wednesday, which is also the day we host the European Festival Awards.

We have around 4,000 delegates, most of them from Europe, but we also have, in total, around 30,000 festivals visitors. They are very important, because if you’re an artist, and you’re playing in front of bookers, but not a crowd, you will have a terrible show. You need the audience. But it’s important that we are clear who it is we are actually catering to, and that’s the artist via the delegates. In the end, we’re a city festival. Thursday and Friday we’ll have space for a couple of more venues than in previous years, meaning that we can present more artists. This year we’re going to have 20 official venues, compared to last year’s 16.

Which are the new venues?
Het Paleis, which is close to Simplon, allowing us to use that part of the city a bit more. Another venue we haven’t used in a very long time is the Nieuwe Kerk. It’s one of the prettiest churches we have in Groningen. Since last year, we’ve also put on concerts at WEnutbutter, a venue that is actually a peanut butter factory. If you have haven’t visited it last year, I would definitely do so, it’s a really good atmosphere.

You mentioned the increased costs. The renting of venues, many of which need to be turned into a concert spaces for ESNS specifically, must be one of the costliest items on your balance sheets.
It sounds very counterintuitive, because we actually needed to save costs, but we didn’t compromise on what we offer the artists. We wanted to book talent from across Europe, from different genres, including music from the diaspora, and this is what we needed. We’ve achieved to make it work by producing a little less extras, and downscaling other program points.

We, for instance, used to have big artists perform at the Grote Markt for free. It attracts a lot of people, but is not relevant to the core mission of Eurosonic per se. This year, we are going to put on as much talent at the Grote Markt as last year, but on a much smaller scale, driven by the same idea of exposing the industry to the best new talent from Europe.

What are some of the things a conference needs to provide in 2025?
With lots of important delegates under the same roof at the Oosterpoort, we’re hoping they’re more likely to bump into each other than in passing on their way from venue to venue. We have a lot of speed meetings this year, where you can meet with experts for six minutes. One of our major networking events is our annual ESNS Exchange General Assembly on the Friday, where 260 bookers, festival partners and export offices are in one room together, sharing a good dinner and the opportunity to talk. They also have their own lounge. The entire event is designed for people to meet with each other, to share information, and to close deals. ESNS is still the perfect place for the European music industry to do that.

What are some of the topics tackled at the conference?
We have a wide range of relevant topics, not just for bookers and programmers. One of the panels I’m particularly looking forward to is called “How to Lose (or Steal) an Act,” featuring some top agencies discussing the phenomenon of “stealing” each other’s acts – which is a lot different than at labels, for instance, where relationships are usually much more long term. In the agency world, it’s more common for artists to walk over.

There’s a lot of panels on AI. We have been doing that for years now, but mostly from the perspective of an outsider looking at a trend. This year, we’re really looking at what you can actually do with it, of what benefit it could be to you. We have quite a few topics on sustainability, again, very action-focused.

Any other new additions, or changes to the event you’d like to mention?
For years now, we have been working with an organization called Revelland, who are determined to make performing arts accessible to everyone. We’ve not only worked on the conference program together, but also curated an evening program, which showcases five artists, who will perform a fully accessible, and immersive show, turning all senses, from smell to taste, into vibrations, sound, and visuals. We’re always stretching our understanding of what pop music is. What is part of it? What is a crossover? I don’t even think pop music is the right term anymore, there are so many genres that can be considered pop music.

Anything else you’d like to highlight?
Our MME Awards are always a highlight, but that’s not necessarily news. We, once again, have amazing nominees, honestly: Yamê from France, Judeline from Spain, Daniela Pes from Italy, the list goes on, and it’s just, wow, I’m really happy with the selection this year.

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