Queen's No Longer Supporting The Belfast Festival

Queen's University has confirmed it will not be supporting the Belfast Festival due to the lack of funds.

A statement from the university said: "Following a detailed strategic review of the Belfast Festival at Queen's by the Festival's Steering Group, the university has decided, with great reluctance, not to continue with the Belfast Festival at Queen's.

"This decision is a consequence of financial challenges to the Belfast Festival at Queen's in recent years and significant cuts to the public purse, which have disproportionately impacted upon both the culture and arts, and higher education sectors.

"A key recommendation of the review was to secure a three-year funding agreement to allow for long term planning that consolidated a new minimum baseline of public funding.

"The report recommended that the Belfast Festival at Queen’s would need to grow its annual budget to approximately £2m to enable investment in the quality programme required to achieve a world-class event.

"Unfortunately, in the current climate, this is not possible."

Festival Director Richard Wakely commented: "Whilst this is disappointing news, it nevertheless represents a genuine opportunity to work constructively with our remaining public and private stakeholders to explore the redesign and re-launch of Festival as a city wide event of international stature and significance for 2015 and beyond. This journey is made possible by the achievements we have made in the last two editions of Festival in 2013 and 2014, re-establishing our artistic credentials at home and abroad, increasing our audiences by 28% in 2014, adding annually £2million to the local economy and returning the Festival to good financial health. We welcome the opportunity to continue to work with our public Stakeholders including Arts Council Northern Ireland, Tourism NI, Belfast City Council and British Council and hope to announce the future of the event and dates for this year's edition in the coming weeks ahead. Festival is also grateful to Queen’s for its support over the last 52 years and appreciates the difficult economic background against which this decision has been made."

(CD/IT)