On Friday the NITB announced that they would be cutting the Event Fund from their budget.
As you can imagine this will have a catastrophic effect on our festivals, Culture Night, Festival of Fools, The MAC, Feile an Phobal, the list goes on. This threatens our Events tourism at on a massive scale.
Today at the Black Box, Hill Street, at 2pm there will be a meeting for those wanting to voice their opinion and work out a way to reverse this decision.
Some of our much loved festivals may not be able to continue. Some of their organisers have spoken out:
Richard Wakeley, Festival Director of Belfast Festival said:
“We continue to be very concerned at the reduction in public financial support for the arts and we call upon the policymakers to urgently reconsider their decision.”
Adam Turkington, manager of Culture Night Belfast said:
“This fund represents one third of our total budget and as anyone who’s worked with me knows I make our tiny budget go as far as possible. It simply can’t be done without this money. It would be negligent to have an event with over 50 000 people without the appropriate infrastructure in place. So I hope you enjoyed Culture Night 2014 cause it will be the last. This is cause of the deadlock at Stormont btw and it’s just the start”.
E-mail NITB to address your concerns: eventsunit@nitb.com
