Who is David Edmunds? Meet the man behind the first Selby Arts Festival

No doubt this is music to the ears of festival director David Edmunds ahead of the July 22 to 30 inaugural event, as his wish to utilise his contacts book to the max for the cause of the arts in Selby comes to fruition.

"The real reason why I wanted to launch this festival is deeply personal," he says. "I live in Hambleton, four miles out of Selby, and I've lived in the district for 15 years after first moving to South Milford when wanting to live somewhere green and leafy between Leeds and York.

"Last January we were sat around with friends in a pub thinking, 'why is there not more going on in Selby?', and my hunch was that there was potential to do more in the town, where Selby Town Hall was already doing well under the town council's arts officer, Chris Jones, without any Arts Council funding.

"That success proved there's an audience to tap into: Selby isn't a cultural backwater – that reputation is a a bit of a myth – but where Selby falls down, both as a town and a district, is that it's not good at selling itself. There's been a culture of, if not negativity, then apathy and the feeling that we have nothing to be proud.

Saw point: comedian Ed Byrne

"But we know that arts and culture can change that, and festivals are brilliant at changing people's perceptions of themselves and their town, and at changing the perception of people from outside the town, and I believe that works better in a nine-day festival than in a year-long project."

Edmunds has drawn on plenty of experience when putting Selby Arts Festival together. "I was at the Lowry [in Salford] from when that opened; became a producer at Phoenix Dance in Leeds for four years and then I set up Dep Arts as an independent producer in 2005," he says.

"In 12 years of running Dep Arts, we've worked all over the UK and internationally, touring to the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, taking work to China and Singapore. Our bread and butter has been touring, working with Leeds companies Phoenix Dance, Northern Ballet and Slung Low. At one point we had 25 artists and companies on our books, and in 2012/2013 we were responsible for more touring shows than any other organisation in the UK."

Edmunds had a distinct vision for the festival. "We've always been clear that this isn't a festival where someone's aunt who sings in a choir will be taking part," he says. "It's a festival where performers of national and international status will be performing, and our aim is to make Selby a more creative, fun and playful place to live and work.

"Momentum has just grown and grown and we've got Matthew Warchus [artistic director of London's Old Vic Theatre] as our first patron. He went to Selby High School and he shares our vision that you can come from Selby, study in Selby and have the life you want. It doesn't mean you have to diminish your levels of ambition.

Seth Lakeman: sold-out Selby show

"Having Matthew involved raises the expectation levels that you can achieve things. The Arts Council has not invested in Selby, but then when I talked to Darren Henley, the chief executive of Arts Council England, and brought him up to Selby to show him around, he told me that no-one had applied for funding before."

Arts Council England now on board, Edmunds has drawn together a budget of £100,000 for the first festival. "Over 70 per cent of the budget is new money into Selby, and the Selby Community Enterprise Forum has provided £12,0000 for free theatre shows for 2,000 pupils from nine primary schools in the lead-up to the festival," he says. "Businesses in the town have come together as STEP to give us £5,000 too."

Practical considerations influenced the timing of the festival. "We had to consider when we could have access to Selby Abbey to get acts like Seth Lakeman and Ed Byrne in there, which was really important to us," says Edmunds. "We also wanted our festival to be part of the summer festival season and play our part in that, so Ed Byrne, for example, is doing a warm-up for his Edinburgh Fringe run. There are 300 festivals a year in Yorkshire, but for us, summer is best, because we can do more outside events."

Selby Arts Festival will be at least a five-year project, says Edmunds. "We've already secured the same festival dates for 2018, and we want to be able to grow the festival with mass participation projects, such as hopefully commissioning Slung Low for a show," he reveals. "As people start to recognise our festival brand, we can push the boundaries and be really playful."

He is enjoying establishing the festival. "I've done very serious things, art for art's sake, like working at the Lowry, for the Royal Shakespeare Company and with the French-Canadian director Robert Lepage; now I want to do things that are fun and having fun with this festival is exactly what we'll be doing," says Edmunds.

Plenty of tickets are still available for the festival – visit selbyartsfestival.co.uk for the full programme – and among the shows to note are the Grand Ole Uke Of York on July 27 and the indie folk band Patch & The Giant in a rearranged gig on July 30.

See next Thursday's What's On in The Press for a full festival preview.