Festival Focus - Advancing the Cultural Festival Sector
14 March 2007Barbican Centre, London
On 14th March at the Barbican Centre, CIDA hosted a unique and innovative event, which brought together over 100 community and cultural festivals organisers alongside Arts Officers to discuss the issues and challenges this sub-sector is facing and ways to overcome them.
There were a number of cultural organisations, support providers and funders at the event providing information on how they could support individual festival organisations and the sub-sector as a whole.
A panel discussion was held debating the topic: "Working together: Avoiding friction between funders and the cultural festival sector in the run up to 2012". Each panellist gave an informative 10-minute presentation identifying existing issues and new approaches within the sector.
Chaired by Pax Ndidi a cultural arts consultant the panel consisted of Steve Murray, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Clive Lyttle, Arts Council England and Fiona Stewart of the Green Man festival.
Their varying perspectives and experiences inspired a very lively debate. Various issues arose, such as Arts Council England's policy on funding film related Arts activity, obtaining London 2012 tenders and understanding licensing policies.
One of the most interesting solutions that was debated was to adopt commercial festival practices in order to gain independence and to diversity income streams.
This event set out to enable the audience to gain an insight into various viewpoints and to have a greater understanding of the current cultural festival environment in terms of funding, government policy, programming and delivery practices.
If you would like further information on this event and the Festival Focus Programme, email CIDA.
