OPINION: It’s full steam ahead with live events - Sharon Canavar, Harrogate International Festivals

How are yours looking?

I’ve always been better at managing stuff for other people rather than myself, so how is the year ahead panning out for the Festivals?

Having been unable to celebrate and promote live events over the last couple of years, we are now full steam ahead here at HIF HQ.

That said, all of the work is very much below the radar as we can’t announce our headline events just yet.

And, as someone who is thoroughly useless at keeping secrets, yet having to write this column just ten days out from being able to make any announcements,

I’m having to be very careful in what I let slip!

That said, I think in the style of our very own Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, we could get away with some clues: There could be one or two or three things in the Valley Gardens - dancing or light and fire or music or books!

How about disappearing authors, the return of the enormous tents and a drink that is very much like a good crime story?

Not sure, but there could be a return of the pop-up club in the Montpellier area, I think his formal name might now be James.

What if we closed some roads for a morning and it wasn’t for cycling?

There could be fun things, use of unusual spaces, and you could expect the unexpected... and that’s only up until July!

OK that’s enough, otherwise I’ll tell you everything (for the record I’d definitely tell you everything for a family size bar of Diary Milk) but believe me we can’t wait to get back to it.

Behind all this planning we are still an incredibly small team.

We’re in the midst of recruiting at the moment and are looking forward to rebuilding and returning to delivering across 2022.

What we’re hoping though is that our audience return.

Some recent research around audiences for cultural festivals shows that 20 per cent of the audience just isn’t coming back right now.

Doesn’t matter what the programme is, what the safety measures might be, they’re not coming back.

There’s a financial issue here in that so many arts organisations work on such a high percentage of venue capacity to make the budgets work, losing one fifth of audience revenue can be devastating, which means losing programmed events as we can’t afford to take the risk.

Beyond the money side of it though, we miss our Festival community, those people who pop up regularly throughout oWeur programme of work are missed, and I hope that as the year evolves we can welcome back all sections of our audience as part of the HIF family.

In the meantime, take a look at the Mercer Gallery or Harrogate Theatre or Ripon Cathedral and the myriad other events that take place across our fantastic District over the next few weeks.

Choose something out of the programme and support them – I promise, it will mean the world.