Comment: Mathew Street Festival gets the cash it deserves

Mar 7 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

THE news that Liverpool’s Mathew Street Festival will have funding worthy of its status is news we should all welcome.

Today, the Liverpool Daily Post reveals the city council has set aside £750,000 for the 2008 festival, to ensure it is an event everyone remembers for the right reasons.

The budget has officially increased by £350,000, to £750,000, in the wake of the cancellation of 2007, when it originally allocated only £400,000 to finance the August Bank Holiday extravaganza.

And, in what should be recognised as an enlightened move, the company behind the original report that killed off last year’s festival on safety grounds has been brought in as safety advisor.

Thank goodness lessons have been learned from those shameful events.

The decision to kill off the 2007 festival with just weeks to go overshadowed the celebrations for Liverpool’s 800th birthday, and pulled the spotlight onto the city for all the wrong reasons, even as the final touches were put to the forthcoming Capital of Culture programme.

The Mathew Street Festival is always an incredible time to visit Liverpool, but this year we can expect it to be even more special.

More than 100,000 people from across the world attend the event, and, with Liverpool’s status as European Capital of Culture, it can expect to attract even greater numbers – and even more media coverage.

Among the plans already under way are moves by the Culture Company to put stages at Derby Square, Water Street, Chapel Street, Tithebarn Street, Williamson Square, and the Merseytunnel entrance at Byrom Street.

It certainly appears as though organisers are determined the 2008 event will go on without a hitch. And it is easy to see how Lee Forde, publicly blamed for last year’s fiasco, feels vindicated by the decision to increase the budget.

If only organisers could have shown a little more forethought last year.