Might this be useful to the folks at the recent The Challenge of Change event? So what sort of small festivals is the city currently lacking?

It’s probably worth seeing this in light of the comments from Neil Rami of Marketing Birmingham that I linked to the other day. When asked which cities have marketed themselves effectively through culture he named Barcelona, Berlin, Glasgow and:

Rotterdam, as they have come from nowhere. They have spent eight years capacity building their ability to host festivals and in that time have gone from something like 8 each year to 109. They saw festivals as a way of building a career for an artist and for telling a story. They now import festivals, poaching them from other cities as well as starting their own.

Topics include the role of the arts (esp independent art) in marketing the city, who Marketing Birmingham markets Birmingham to, what the challenges are and which cities are doing it well.

I’d pull out a quote but I can’t choose one and, besides, going all soundbitey just isn’t becoming of an august publication such as this one.