BBC News
By Vincent Dowd
Arts reporter
In 2002 Vanessa Branson, sister to Richard, opened a funky new hotel in Marrakech in Morocco. A couple of years later she launched an even riskier enterprise – a big new arts festival in the same city. The Marrakech Biennale is now in its sixth edition. As she moves away from day-to-day control Vanessa Branson says the event’s focus on international collaboration is more important than ever.
Even if the surname weren’t such a giveaway, Vanessa Branson’s physical resemblance to her older brother might hint at a shared streak of tough entrepreneurialism.
‘I admit being a Branson can sometimes open doors. Certainly it helped when we were setting up the first Arts in Marrakech project, which is how the Biennale was branded in those days.
“But I’m Richard’s sister, not his daughter – we didn’t have endless funds available to establish a festival of visual art and performance in Morocco. Some people thought the idea was crazy and would collapse after year one.”
Branson had been busy starting her new luxury hotel in Marrakech when she caught a clip of President George W Bush on the radio.
‘I heard Bush say you’re either with us or against us. I was completely incandescent with rage: I thought it was all going to damage relations with the Muslim world in a stupid way.
“As someone who’d had very positive experiences working with Moroccan people, I decided to develop a platform for debate about our similarities and differences. Things have developed a lot since but that was our starting point.’
Branson says the pleasure of the first festival in 2005 was often that she and her team didn’t really know what they were doing.
“But there’s a poetry and an energy to Moroccan life and somehow it all worked anyway. Marrakech attracts creative people, which is what we’ve built on ever since 2005,” she says.
“Until 1991 I’d run an art gallery in London so I had useful contacts – though a lot of the charm had to do with the venues, which were gorgeous and still are.” They range from the Moorish Ben Youssef madrasa to a bank building on Jemaa el-Fna – the vast and noisy square which all tourists in Marrakech gravitate to.
