Peter Jackson column

Oct 14 2004 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

It's a shame there are to be no fireworks on the Tyne Bridge at the New Year.

On the other hand, it is good news that there is to be a winter festival lasting several weeks.

In this country, we don't tend to do festivals on the same scale and with the same ambition as they do abroad.

The obvious exception is the Edinburgh Festival, which is estimated to be worth £125m of visitor spending and 2,000 new jobs. Add to this the fact that festivals tend to have low and decreasing marginal production costs, compared with the high fixed costs of theatre and concert facilities.

In Europe every city, or at least region, seems to have its own musical or operatic festival. In France alone, it has been estimated there are at least 860 every year. As people have become more affluent, so the demand for festivals has grown, combining the desire to visit foreign cities with a cultural excuse for doing so.

What adds to this growing market is the tendency for those who wouldn't normally visit opera or concert houses to embrace the informality and carnival atmosphere of a festival.

As Edinburgh shows, the potential benefits to tourism are immense and festivals are often timed at the end of summer to extend the tourist season.

Festivals don't have to mean music. New York's St Patrick's Day Parade is essentially a festival weekend. It is, by the way, if you've never seen it, an extraordinary event, with thousands of Americans kitting themselves out in the national dress of Scotland and pretending to be Irish.

There are, of course, possible downsides, as I'm sure Newcastle and Gateshead councils are only too aware. Festivals may look like great money spinners but there can be considerable hidden costs in organisation, security, traffic control, cleaning up and damage to public property.

I get the impression the Edinburgh Festival is none too popular with the locals and St Patrick's Day Parade shuts down Manhattan for a day.

That said, when properly managed they can bring tremendous benefits. With Newcastle and Gateshead's admirable cultural agenda, with the Baltic and the Sage, we have an opportunity unavailable to probably any other English city other than Liverpool. We have a reputation for friendliness, for enjoying ourselves and much to show visitors.

Who knows, if the winter festival is a success, it could include a fireworks display next year.