City’s top festivals face funding shortfall

Five of Lisburn City’s top annual events, including its flagship Hillsborough Oyster Festival, are potentially facing a major cash shortfall after the axe fell on the Northern Ireland Tourist Board Events Fund.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment announced last Friday it was scrapping the fund in answer to the “very difficult financial situation” facing the Stormont Executive.

In a statement, DETI said: “Given these circumstances, the NITB events fund open call for next year will now not go ahead.”

While the International Tourism Events Fund will not open to new applications and the one-year Tourism Events National Sponsorship Scheme will not operate for 2015/16, the department did indicate that the decision would not affect those events with a letter of offer from NITB which extended into 2015/16.

Lisburn City events this year benefited from the fund to the tune of £57,000.

The Hillsborough Oyster festival pulled down £24,000, with £15,000 going to the Northern Ireland Festival of Speed at Maze.

Back in Hillsborough, £6,000 went to the Sunflowerfest, with another £6,000 going to the Northern Ireland Countryside Festival, held this year at Balmoral Park, Maze after a lengthy run at Moira Demesne.

The Hilden Beer and Music Festival was likewise awarded £6,000.

All told, cancellation of the one-year national events scheme could affect 65 organisations provincewide: between them they benefited this year from £1,133,000 of funding.

Among high-profile events likely to be affected are the Northern Ireland International Air Show, Disability Pride, the Belfast Tattoo, Cinemagic and Culture Night Belfast.

Locally, the Ulster Grand Prix at Dundrod is one of a number of events unaffected going into next year at least, as they operate in the International Tourism Events Fund (now closed to new applicants) under a three-year contract.

Events elsewhere in a similar position include motorcycle road-racing’s North West 200 and football’s Dale Farm Milk Cup.

At time of going to pressLisburn City Council had yet to comment in response to the news.

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