OLAF FURNISS

Born To Be Wide / Founder
Olaf Furniss is the founder Wide Events, which hosts the award-winning Wide Days convention in Edinburgh every April. This year it launched the Festival Takeover, which saw three summer events invited to guest programme a stage. The initiative aims to serve as a new music export platform and an opportunity for festivals to promote themselves in the UK to music tourists.  
This is an area in which Furniss has built up a high level of expertise via the Music Tourist consultancy he founded in 2016. It hosted the world’s first music tourism summit and has worked with a range of public agencies in both Europe and Australia. In 2018 it collaborated with Newcastle University on a study exploring how to foster closer ties between the music and tourism sectors. 
Furniss has previously worked as a consultant for industry events including Bylarm, Popkomm and Reeperbahn Festival, as wrote for Billboard, Music Week and I-Q. He co-writes a weekly column for Scotland on Sunday, and is an occasional contributor to The Guardian, Musik Woche and BBC Radio Scotland.