Welcome to the North Devon Festival

The North Devon Festival – an annual, month-long festival of over 200 events celebrating the region's rich and diverse cultural life, will not continue in its present form in 2012. Key projects developed through the Festival will, however, continue to be produced with the message that North Devon is a great place to live and visit all year round.

The wide range of events that falls under the Festival banner, held in the month of June, has for the past 13 years been presented, organised and managed by North Devon Theatres’ Trust (NDTT). Despite continuing support from North Devon Council, NDTT has lost - along with so many other cultural organisations, a significant amount of core funding.

In a letter to the Festival’s event organisers, Alan Giddings, Chief Executive of NDTT, thanked everyone for their hard work and commitment in making the 13th North Devon Festival such a success and then explained how – given the financial restraints, he hoped to continue promoting the aims of the Festival.

Of course we are disappointed that the North Devon Festival that we have all worked so hard to develop cannot continue in its previous form. In these economically difficult times and with the sharp reduction in our core funding, we are simply unable to offer the massive marketing effort and expense that went into promoting the June Festival. Like so many other charities in today’s climate, we have to remain creative and resourceful to fulfil our objectives: to present a quality, accessible programme of shows and events for the benefit of residents and visitors to North Devon. In this respect, we will be producing a small number of key projects from the Festival throughout 2012, as well as working on other ways to support cultural events across the region during the year.

With North Devon Council continuing to support us as best it can given the pressure from central government, our focus will now be to build on the success of the festival - in demonstrating to the region and country the extent and quality of the region’s cultural activities, throughout the year rather than just the month of June. Events such as the Barnstaple Fringe, Art Trek and Theatrefest, will we hope continue to flourish, not least because they will be freed from a busy June schedule. With the benefits that comes from programming and promoting events more evenly throughout the year, our message to the residents and visitors to the region is: North Devon is a great place to live and visit all year round.