Dare to chase the hardest place on Earth - Pep Salazar (OFFF)

Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary) - Radim Malinic

In this episode of Daring Forever, host Radim Malinic interviews Pep Salazar, director of the internationally renowned OFFF festival, about his

Key takeaways

• True creativity often emerges from behind-the-scenes work rather than spotlight moments.
• Festivals are not just events but temporary cities built around shared human experiences.

Main topics

• The journey from drama student to festival director
• Designing temporary cities for three-day cultural events

Notable quotes

We build the city for three days, people come, leave the city, and then they go out.

I realized that I was cool behind the scenes.

Conclusion

Pep Salazar's story reveals that extraordinary impact often comes from qui

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:09) Yeah, you need to improve, you need to add layers, you need to change. I love to design the festival. With my team, every year, we have the problem. We draw, we design the festival. We say, okay, can we put the stage here? No, no, maybe. We change, we don't change. We change that one, we change the other one. We change the outdoor tent. We change the market. Every year, we have a change. And every few years, we have a massive change. And every five years, we have a rebranding. We're kind of crazy, but the thing is that we are a festival in this area. If we will change, how can we say to people to show us how much is going to change? I need to take reason. Speaker 2 (0:51) Welcome to Daring Forever, a podcast about being human, wired for wonder, capable of courage, perpetually becoming. It's about the waves that look us under and the strange, stubborn grace with which we surface. My name is Raleigh Malinich. I'm an author, creative and an eternally curious human being on a mission to speak to incredible people whom I call Forever Daring Humans. Those in pursuit of an extraordinary life. Every week I share an interview that is packed with amazing stories, value and I can only ask you, how will you dare forever? This podcast is inspired by my upcoming book titled Daring Forever, which is now available for pre-order out in October. Speaker 2 (1:37) My guest today spent two decades turning a design conference into one of the most sought-after festivals in the creative world. Beb Salazar is the director of a festival and a community built on the belief that showing the unfinished idea matters more than the polished portfolio. In this conversation, we go back to his own beginnings as a drama student in a small town near Barcelona, through his years of building Sonar Festival and into what it really takes to design a temporary festival city for three days. one that now travels to Mexico, Sevilla and Montreal and beyond. This is a conversation about risk, honesty and why community, done properly, is the hardest and most rewarding thing you can build. It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Pep Salazar. Speaker 2 (2:27) Hey, Pep, welcome to Daring Forever. It's great to see you. How are you doing? Speaker 3 (2:31) Hi, Radim. I'm really, really good. And I'm really happy to be here sharing with you some time. And yeah, let's talk about whatever you want, because I'm happy to be here. Speaker 2 (2:40) You are here on my new season called Daring Forever, because as you can tell, as you know, from our conversations, I'm a fan of what you do. I'm really fond of what you've created and what you've created, especially for the community at large, because... It's not easy. I'm always full of praise for people who are the ones behind the scene because it's nice to see a great speaker on the stage. It's nice to think that they've carried a festival. But if it wasn't for people like yourself and your team, none of this would have existed. So, Pep, for those who may have not heard of you, which I doubt is anyone at all, would you introduce yourself? Who are you? What do you do? Speaker 3 (3:13) Thank you for your words, dying words. Yeah, I'm Speaker 2 (3:16) Pep, Speaker 3 (3:16) Pep Salazar. I'm the director of... I've been running the conference from the last 20 years. The conference was founded in 2001. I joined in 2007 because of a series of circumstances, and then I realized that off was a gem to Polish, and I rise up what's off right now, which is many, many things. It's a festival, but on top of that, it's a community and other things we can talk about. Speaker 2 (3:42) Absolutely. I like the expression that you say, it's a gem to Polish, because... Pretty much everything is a diamond in the rough, isn't it? Like we're just trying to find the best possible version of this. But Pep, I've got this habit of doing this on the show. We ask people where the creativity comes to them. Obviously you are per se, you wouldn't recognize yourself as a creative. And I remember us having this conversation in person about, hey, Pep, you need to come on a podcast. And you say, I'm not creative. I'm like, no, no, no, you're coming. We're making this happen. Because what was your direction of travel? Where did you grow up? Was creativity ever on your radar or did you happen to stumble into a festival and go, okay? No, I Speaker 3 (4:18) came Speaker 2 (4:19) from Speaker 3 (4:19) a small town. Well, it's not in the swamp today, but it was a pretty small town near Barcelona. It's called Terrassa. I was working there. My parents wasn't at all in our cultural creativity. And I don't know why, but I really started loving theater and plays at the age of 14, 15. And then I realized that I wanted to be an actor. So I studied drama for five years. I've been four years studying drama in Barcelona, and then I went to London for one year to study drama. I was remembering the other day, I was doing this Meissner technique, which is a repetition technique that you repeat the other one, and that starts the dialogue. And that pulls me into the deep culture, in a way, and in deep creativity. And then I realized that I wasn't an actor. I mean, everybody can be an actor, but you need to be very lucky, and you need to hang up with... people that maybe you don't want to, and you need to build families that maybe you don't want to. That's the acting thing. And I realized that I was cool behind the scenes. And then I went to the university. I knocked to the university and said, hey, can I come back to study some cultural policies and management and that kind of thing? And I did that. Really, really fast, I joined SOLAR, you know, the music festival? I joined SOLAR to work with them. That was back in the year 2000, 1998. And I joined them when they were like starting growing. And I learned a lot on how to make a festival. And I learned a lot on how to make a team that believes in a project and a team that focuses on an objective. And then the festival goes as a house. It's like a place where people meet. And I have always had that idea that we build the city for three days, people come, leave the city, and then they go out. Combining that... For my curiosity on plays, theatre, drama, music, dance. And yeah, then I found off. And design, it was more than design. It was digital design. It was motion. It was VFX. It was an interesting thing to jump in. And I dive really, really deep until today. So that's my journey in two minutes. Speaker 2 (6:26) Wow, what a story. Pep, I've known you for a while, but I never knew that you wanted to be an actor. So... How does a kid growing up in Terrassa, how do you get to the immersion of this world? Because I don't think I've ever had anyone who said I wanted to be an actor. What was your appeal? What did you watch? What did you consume? Was there a local culture? What did you do? Speaker 3 (6:47) In my high school, I did some plays. Every man was a classic one. It's a really nice one because it's about a woman doesn't want to have sex with men because men are in the war. And that's something that can happen today still. And I remember having this punch of being on the stage and doing plays, getting a dress, getting disguised, being somebody that you are not. Maybe I have something of my childhood that I cannot explain yet, and that becomes that I wanted to be an actor. Actually, I still read drama. I prefer theater than cinema. But nowadays it's still serious, still shows, and it's another world for sure. And I know people that are studying drama, and their focus is another one. They want to be famous. Speaker 2 (7:30) So in your own words, you said it's like building a city for three days. And I love that expression. You mentioned you've learned quite a lot about building the team and learned a lot of skills. But what was it like to be thrown into this festival, which is already a beast, with your postgraduate experiences? What was that like? Did you find yourself scared or was it exciting? Speaker 3 (7:51) I was excited, but I was really scared the day before we opened the doors because we were waiting then. We were working in the community, and that's for the community. It's people that go to a festival to dance. They want to dance. And you need to be ready to bring them the best music you have, the best artists you can, and the best experience you can. Nowadays, everybody's talking about experiences, and the festival bubble is huge. In those days, we were building that festival bubble in a way by building that experience, and by taking care of water, beer, food, whatever bad music, contents, contents, contents, contents. Design, design, design. Not only design on visual design, but how you design, the experience, how you design, the status, how you design the place. And in that days, I started in the production team on Sonar by Day. I ended being the head of production of Sonar by Day years after. And Sonar by Day in that moment was in the center of Barcelona, Magba, City City. So it was in the city and it was so back. And it was so amazing. and so exciting and so vibrant, but so scary also because you don't have a way to escape. Speaker 1 (9:01) It's something that you have to have in mind. Speaker 3 (9:04) But not a way to escape if something bad happens, but a way to escape for the music also. I remember it was one year that we had a blind guest, and it was Sisters of Sisters. So nobody knew about Speaker 1 (9:16) Sisters Speaker 3 (9:17) of Sisters playing each other live. And when they start playing with the guitars and everything... People at the queue was pushing the queue because they listened and said, hey, that physicist is this. And you know, with that moment and people queuing, that kind of moment happens at festivals and that makes you feel like, okay, I'm doing something for good. I'm making people happier, not happy, happier, because they go happy, so they're happier. And that's something outstanding because it's something that I'm grateful every day because I made my life by doing that. for many, many years. And that's something to consider. And I consider it almost every day. Speaker 2 (9:52) That's really interesting because you talk about said curationists, that we've got people to come to dance and we want to make sure they can dance. And now we talk about how things have moved because we created an experience. It's like things are a bit bigger. I mean, a bit bigger, a bit different. I remember going to festivals at that time, around 2001, 2002. You didn't really care if it was in a mud pit somewhere in the middle of a forest. As long as the band was playing, if your favorite DJ was playing, like we're having fun, you know, and now things have moved on, I think, in a good way because the worlds are more immersive and you've got more things to do outside of it because when the DJs are playing and you find yourself in a mud pit in the middle of a forest or wherever else, you're like, okay, what next? So what was that change that you've seen, that seismic change in the production? the values, the experience that now a festival is, really, as you described, building a city for a few days. What did that change feel like? Because it was gradual, but it was the one that you find yourself building a totally different festival to when you started with. Speaker 3 (10:49) Yeah, sure. Just learning year after year and learning with honesty, listening to people, but not only for service, but talking to people and talking to the audience during the festival when it's happening. And I think... We were lucky in Barcelona also when people are attending Soder because the three directors, for me, they are genius. And they were with really good ideas and ideas that you can make it true and you can make a real thing from the ideas. So I learned in a way to make these ideas happen. All my life, I think it follows me that, okay, I have this idea. Can I make it happen? How can I transform an idea to a project or to something valuable? That's one thing. And then the other thing is... Adding layers of value all the time. That's really important to make a brand existing. Sonar is existing from the last 30 years or 32 years. It's something out of the world. But it's because they are adding layers of contents, adding layers of experiences, adding layers of context also. Context is really important. Reading the context, the surroundings. The city, where are you doing the festival? The venue, where are you doing the festival? The people attending, who are these people? Why do they attend? Why do they come back? Also the contents, the music you play, the design we promote. It's really important to understand the context. Speaker 2 (12:10) Absolutely. As you said, talking to people when it's happening, I think, is one of the best insights to get because you get people in the moment and then you get people reflective weeks and days afterwards going, well, you know. So I think you get the most honest answer when people are actually in it. How important would you say is actually the location? Because I can think of Sona,