Agenda item

Presentation by Louise Emerson, Chief Executive (Cheltenham Festivals)

Louise Emerson, the Chief Executive of Cheltenham Festivals, gave a presentation (Appendix 1) which outlined current performance and future aspirations. 

During the presentation she emphasised that that the Festivals’ aim was to create a cultural experience and for the Festivals to stand out from other similar events. She highlighted the financial challenges that the Festivals faced given that the funding they received from the Arts Council was reducing in real terms. 50% of their funding was currently received from sponsors which could never be guaranteed and therefore was a continual challenge. The Festivals were looking to change their funding model next year to reduce this risk. The Festivals continue to rely upon key sponsors and partners.

She described the cultural, economic and educational contributions that the Festivals made to Cheltenham. In addition to the the events the Festivals involved putting on many free activities and outreach projects across the town. These events gave children who would not normally be involved in the Festivals the opportunity to engage and to help them appreciate music and reading.

In conclusion she summarised their outcomes which were to:

• be distinctive and best
• extend their audiences
• be locally embedded with partners and people in the town
• improve their marketing
• strengthen their financial stability

The chair invited questions from the Committee and the Chief Executive gave the following responses:

• The Chief Executive confirmed that she had been invited to participate in the Tourism Strategy group and she would see the Festivals as an important tourist attraction in the town.
• The estimate of 30% of Festival visitors coming from outside the area was a conservative estimate and the Festivals would continue to have a joint aim to attract more visitors from both outside and within Cheltenham.
• It was important that they continued to inspire the next generation so education was an integral part.It was much easier to raise money for the educational side of their work so she was confident that this important work would continue to be funded.
• A Member asked some questions on behalf of local residents about the noise levels at the Jazz Festival which had been reported to be in the order of 62/63  decibels which was above the agreed 60 decibel limit.
• The Chief Executive was not a specialist on noise levels and would provide a written response on what steps the Festivals were  taking to reduce the noise levels at the Jazz Festival to 60 dB or below.
• Other Members advised that although local residents were generally supportive of the Festivals they had suggested that more use could be made of other venues in the town such as Pittville Park and could there be a fallow year when the Gardens would not be used and therefore had time to recover. Another suggestion was that the free events at the Jazz Festival could be moved to an alternative part of Montpellier Gardens alongside the main road rather than close to residential properties. If the Literature Festival could be held in August/September it could potentially use the Cheltenham Ladies College as a large venue.
• She confirmed that she had given an enormous amount of thought to potential venues. There was a lack of suitable large venues in the town and therefore they were reliant on the 1400/1500 seat venues which the large tented venues provided and indeed these large events helped to subsidise the smaller ones. Transferring the Festivals to a venue such as Pittville Park would create a very different type of festival and would not work in her view. Many people were attracted to the Festivals because they did take place in a hub in the centre of town and this works well for retailers and businesses as well as festival visitors. She also felt the Festivals would lose momentum if they stopped for year. They already had events in many other venues across town including the Everyman, the Daffodil and the Hotel du Vin.  The timing of the Literature Festival in October was key to the Christmas book selling market and therefore an August/September date would not be acceptable and would also clash with the Edinburgh Festival. The Cheltenham Ladies College were also keen that their pupils could attend the Festival so they would not support it being held out of term time.
  It was her understanding that the Festivals were restricted as to which parts of the Gardens they could use but she was willing to explore other options. (A Member from the Gardens Forum indicated that this had been discussed at one of their meetings and it was his understanding that as long as the Festivals did not take more space they could use alternative part of the Gardens).
• She noted the suggestion that a Buskers Festival had been very successful in another country but highlighted that there would be no income from ticket sales and there were a lot of hidden costs in staging free events across the town and they were quite resource intensive.
• She noted the suggestion of an urban street art festival.
• She acknowledged that funding from the council had reduced from 8% to 1% and Arts Council funding was also reducing. The Festivals had responded to this by selling more tickets and bringing in more sponsorship and partners.

The Chair thanked the Chief Executive for a very informative presentation and commended the Festivals for the publicity they brought to the town. He would ask officers to follow up the point about the viability of any relocation within the Gardens.