Kay Trayford
Operations Director at ODX
As part of our Around The Campfire series, we sit down with Kay Trayford, Operations Director at ODX. Twelve years of producing events — festivals, theatrical productions, international operations — have given Kay the sort of brain that is already working through traffic plans and worst-case scenarios more than a year out from the gates opening. In the spaces between all that, there has been a bear on a Romanian mountain pass, three weeks rehabilitating jaguars in Belize, a year living and running events in Fuerteventura, and a self-built campervan that carried her and Jazz across sixteen countries. We talked about saying yes, why the best things never make it onto a CV, and the invisible architecture that lets everyone else simply turn up and enjoy themselves.
Twelve years producing events - festivals, theatrical productions, international operations - and in the spaces between, a wild bear encounter on the Transfăgărășan Highway, three weeks rehabilitating jaguars in Belize, and a year living and running events in Fuerteventura. How much of your career has been deliberate, and how much has just been saying yes?
Saying yes, mostly. If something sounds fun, different, or out of the ordinary, I’m in. Bears on a Romanian mountain pass, jaguars in Belize, packing up and moving to Fuerteventura - all yes. There are limits, though. Jumping out of a plane is a no. Jazz recently suggested she might want to be a helicopter pilot, and that was also a no. But for the most part, I’m in for the ride. Literally.
I think that’s what keeps life interesting. I’m not reckless about it - I’m quite grounded really - but I’ve never seen the point of turning down something just because it’s unfamiliar.
The best things tend to start that way.
You built your own campervan, then spent a year crossing sixteen countries and eighteen thousand miles with Jazz. What did that year on the road teach you that twelve years of professional events hadn’t?
Before the van, I was very career-driven. The job, the next job, what it all looked like on paper. The road changed that. When you’re opening the van door every morning not knowing whether you’ll be looking at the sea, a mountain, or, sometimes, a car park in a foreign country, you start to realise there are a lot of qualifiers for success that a CV doesn’t capture. Different cultures, different people, different ways of living - it shifts something in you.
I came away from that year genuinely believing that having a life worth living matters more than years ticked off in the right order.
The experiences I had on that trip aren’t on my CV, but they’re probably the most important thing on it.
For most people, “event operations” is invisible until something goes wrong. What’s the thing about running an event like ODX that would genuinely surprise people if they could see it?
How early it starts. Most people’s version of event prep is the week before. Mine is now. I’m already thinking about traffic management, contingency plans, ‘what happens if’ scenarios. I’m working through the worst that could happen and figuring out how to make sure it doesn’t, long before anyone else has even thought about it.
That’s the job, really. Not the day itself - the day is almost the easy part if you’ve done the groundwork.
The operations are the invisible architecture that lets everyone else just turn up and enjoy it.
You and Jazz went to shows in Germany and came home with the same question: why doesn’t the UK have this? What was it about those events that showed you what was possible?
They’re institutions. You can see it the moment you walk in - the scale, the detail, the sense that this has been built and refined over many years. That doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t happen overnight.
That’s the dream for ODX, and I think it’s an achievable one. Every great event starts somewhere. You just have to be committed enough to build it properly and patient enough to let it grow.
You’re about to go full-time on the road in January 2027 and come back for ODX in September. You’re building an event that celebrates the lifestyle you’re actively choosing to live. Does that make the work feel different?
Yes, because I’m the audience. Everything I’m planning, I’m planning for a version of myself who’ll be rolling in in September having been on the road since January.
That’s a useful test - if I wouldn’t want to queue for it, park in it, or pay for it, it doesn’t go in.
It raises the stakes too. I’m not producing an event for a client and walking away on the Sunday night. This is my world, these are my people, and I’ll still be in it in October. You can’t fake your way through that; the community would spot it a mile off.
If anything it’s made me more careful rather than less. When you actually love the thing you’re building for, you’re much more aware of all the ways it could be done badly.
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