Sarah McBriar

Sarah McBriar is the Founder & Creative Director of AVA & UP Productions, specialising in large-scale festival and conference creation, production design and programming across the audio, visual arts (AVA) sector.

Sarah’s experience and passion for the sector this year earned her a nomination for the title of ‘Underground Hero’ in DJ Mag’s Best of British Awards for championing grassroots UK music communities.

Her creation AVA has been described as:
•‘A cultural catalyst’ - The Independent
• ‘Ireland’s most innovative electronic music festival’ – The Irish Times
• ‘One of the top ten city music festivals in the UK’ – The Guardian
• ‘One of the world’s most exciting electronic festivals’ - Mixmag

With over 12 years’ experience across the live entertainment, events and cultural sector, Sarah focuses on concept creation, production design, producing and fundraising for the development of the Festival & Conference. She has partnered with a number of high profile brands including the BBC, Avant Arte, Boiler Room, Broadwick Live.

Between 2012-2015, she pioneered and project managed a large-scale tourism development project for Manchester City FC, securing international investment and
achieving leading attraction status in the city. She has also worked with Block 9 at Glastonbury, the Manchester International Festival, the biennial international arts festival run by Factory International, and Greater Manchester’s club series, the Warehouse Project.

Sarah was the was the first creative producer to receive the CET (Commercial Enterprise Trust) award, due to her 'innovative and bold' approach to projects and productions. She is a guest lecturer at the Central School of Speech and Drama and developed the University’s first online Creative Producing course. A member of the Belfast Music Steering Group that secured UNESCO City of Music Status for Belfast in 2021, she was an active lobbyist during the pandemic for government support for the music and events industry. 

In 2020, Sarah became one of 16 newly appointed Creative Entrepreneur Experts at the Säid Business School, University of Oxford, where she mentors MBA students and small businesses.