2017 Harrogate International Festivals January Newsletter

HARROGATE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVALS

Welcome...

A very Happy New Year from all at the Harrogate International Festivals

We hope you’ve had an enjoyable year with the Harrogate International Festivals.

In 2016 we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Harrogate International Festivals with an exciting programme, with more events than ever before taking place to celebrate this milestone in the festival’s history.

The centrepiece of our celebrations was a specially created Fire Garden which lit up the Valley Gardens and transformed it into a fiery, magical place. Over 25,000 people from the local community came to celebrate with us over the three evenings and it was incredibly special to see people of all ages engaging with and discovering the work of Harrogate International Festivals.

In February Harrogate International Festivals had the pleasure of hosting Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall when they visited Harrogate. This was a wonderful opportunity to reflect on our heritage and the diverse programme of events that Harrogate International Festivals offers.

The Festival goes from strength to strength and works tirelessly to provide audiences with an ever wider range of exceptionally high quality music and literature. This is no once a year Festival. Our commitment to the wider community in Harrogate and the North grows increasingly stronger with outreach work in schools and local communities bringing the magic of high quality arts provision to the next generation.

Thank you for your continuing support. Harrogate International Festivals could not exist without it. No matter how many tickets are sold, the reality is that sponsorship and personal giving remain our lifeblood. By helping to support the Festival you are continuing the rich history of the arts within Harrogate and are welcomed into the ‘Home of Festivals’.

We’re passionate about the community that we work and live in, and believe we need to ensure the Arts remain vibrant for the town and its visitors.

As such we continue to look to our Future 50 Appeal which looks to secure the future of Harrogate International Festivals for future generations over the next 50 years and beyond.

We invite you to read on to learn more about our organisation and we hope you’ll be as excited by our plans for the future as we are.

2017

Box Office: 01423 562 303

www.harrogateinternationalfestivals.com Harrogate International Festivals is a registered charity no. 244861.

music

2016 saw one of Harrogate International Festivals’ largest years to date, as we celebrated our 50th Anniversary, presenting a programme of activity that was bigger than ever, reflecting our diversity, commitment to quality and desire to develop performers and art forms. Within the Harrogate Music Festival 2016, through our theme, Discover, Explore, Experiment, our audiences were guided on an exciting journey, as we ‘Drank to Music’ with Oz Clarke and the Armonico Consort, and voyaged around the world with Fretwork. The centrepiece of our 50th Anniversary celebrations was our specially created Fire Garden, designed by Cie Carabosse, which attracted more than 25,000 to the Valley Gardens. Big name artists including Van Morrison and the John Wilson Orchestra saw audiences flocking to Harrogate, and our outdoor Big Screen plus Oddsocks production of Macbeth, proved as popular as ever. Former HIF Young Musicians, including Julian Lloyd Webber and Lesley Garrett, selected their stars of the future to perform in the extended Young Musicians Series.

Moving into 2017 our season of coffee concerts returns to the Old Swan Hotel, as we host the 24th Harrogate International Sunday Series, welcoming a stellar selection of international chamber musicians, including the dynamic and characteristic Heath Quartet and multi-award winning pianist Alessandro Taverna.

Looking forwards to next July, the Harrogate Music Festival 2017 will present a series of events based upon our Generations theme, celebrating the legacy of the past 50 years, and the promise of the next. Join us in a series of events as we cross generational boundaries, combining musical styles from different generations, and explore musical dynasties and families.

Premier Partners

literature Our year round literary offer for 2016 included the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival, Harrogate History Festival, Children’s Festival and Berwins Salon North series, with over 20,000 tickets sold to literature lovers throughout the year.

We’re honoured to bring some luminous literary giants and hugely well-respected historians, authors and academics to our stage throughout 2016 and are already busy planning this year’s Festivals.

The Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival returned for the sixth year in 2016, hosted over one long weekend in the grandeur of Harrogate’s Crown Hotel, allowing over 2,000 book lovers to experience inspiring talks and stimulating debate – all in a convivial atmosphere, with our programme designed to entertain and inspire. Special Guests attracted huge queues for the events and signings including Dickie Arbiter, Julia Bradbury, Vince Cable, James Naughtie, Mary Portas and John Suchet. Save the date for this year’s programme and join us from 19th – 22nd October 2017, and help us explore our exciting theme of Generations.

The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (renowned as the biggest Festival of its kind in the world) attracted more ticket sales than ever before: just shy of 14,500 in fact over the course of the weekend. We were delighted to welcome over 80 authors to the Harrogate stage over the four days including giants of the genre Linwood Barclay, Martina Cole, Jeffery Deaver, Tess Gerritsen, Peter James, Val McDermid, Peter Robinson and Gerald Seymour and there was a staggering 82 million opportunities to read about the Festival. We also hosted an exclusive one off event with international star Michael Connelly in October, on the very day of publication of his new book. We are already ramping up for this year, and we invite you to join us on a flight of fancy from 20th -23rd July 2017 as the Festival returns with Special Guests including Lee Child, Kathy Reichs and Ian Rankin, Stuart MacBride, Peter May and a special Vera focused event featuring Ann Cleeves, Brenda Blethyn and Kenny Doughty.

The Children’s Festival returned to the Spiegeltent on Crescent Gardens over one long weekend in September, inviting children of all ages and the young at heart to enjoy some of the UK’s most sought after authors, museum experiences and attractions, including Northern Ballet, Seven Stories National Centre for Children’s Books, Professor Pumpernickel’s (sell-out) Super dooper science show and History’s Maid in action, as well as three brilliant book focused events with Hilary Robinson, Mara Menzies and Andy Seed. The vision was to ensure that the Children’s Festival became a significant provider of quality arts activities for young people across a range of art-forms, achieved by the wide programme of genres on offer with dancing, science, music, history and more, and in addition all delivered in a truly magical and enthralling environment.

The Harrogate History Festival returned for the fourth year, with almost 2,000 tickets sold over the long weekend in October.

Special Guests attracted huge queues for the events at the Old Swan Hotel and for book signings by authors Joe Abercrombie, Paddy Ashdown, Antony Beevor Tracy Chevalier, Tom Holland and Janina Ramirez. Philippa Gregory was presented with the Festival’s Outstanding Contribution to Historical Fiction Award to a sell-out audience. We were delighted to partner with the Yorkshire Post to welcome the return of the popular Yorkshire Post Literary Lunch with guest speaker Jonathan Dimbleby to start the festival in style. History is hot, and a blog orchestrated by the Festival on the worst PM in History, which featured in The Guardian online, received over 2,000 comments and over 20,500 shares.

Community Partners

volunteers

As ever, we are incredibly grateful for the on-going support of our dedicated team of Festival volunteers. Whether stuffing envelopes, stewarding events or helping out in the office, Harrogate International Festivals relies on the hard work and enthusiasm of our supporters year round to deliver our acclaimed programme.

If you are interested in being involved please do contact Beth at the Festivals office on 01423 562303.

Regular Funder

HIF+ | reaching out

Our flagship education programme Musical Mums continues to flourish, with a core group of mums and their children attending weekly. We continue to see personal and social changes within our participants, including increased confidence and social interaction. Our Musical Mums attended a special session as part of the Royal Visit in early 2016, attended by TRH the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall, both of whom were impressed by the group and thoroughly enjoyed participating with the music making.

We continue to work alongside our partner, NYMAZ, as we move into our second year of a three year funding opportunity from Youth Music. Earlier this year Musical Mums hosted the first in a series of webinars for NYMAZ, live streamed sessions that can be watched by members of their Early Years Network and fellow music practitioners.

Literacy continues to play a crucial role in our outreach work, and 2016 saw the return of the Big Read and Big Write. In 2016, its eighth year, The Big Read invited readers to discover P.D. James’ classic and pioneering crime novel, ‘An Unsuitable Job for a Woman’, encouraging as many people as possible to read this fantastic work of detective fiction over the Summer. The Festival’s Reader-In- Residence and bestselling crime author Mari Hannah toured libraries across the North of England, inviting readers to celebrate the life and work of one of the world’s greatest writers and the true Grande dame of mystery, with an increase in attendance of over 150% year on year. The Big Write, the UK’s largest children’s literacy session of 2016, took place at Harrogate’s Royal Hall in May with one of Britain’s leading children’s authors, Jason Beresford. 500 schoolchildren from 20 schools across the Harrogate district took part in the day, delivered by the education experts, Pobble – a global literacy initiative for sharing students’ writing, involving primary school children writing short stories around the theme of time travel.

We continue to develop our audience of the future through our Berwins Salon North, a revolutionary movement for the heart and mind, curating interesting content for the interested. The Salon events consist of a TED-style night of the most stimulating ideas in art, science and psychology designed to change your life for the better. The format consists of an evening of three speakers, each given 30 minutes to engage the audience with their subject, interspersed with intervals allowing time for a well-crafted gin and tonic. Salon exists to get the biggest ideas from the UK’s best academics, writers and experts in front of audiences, giving everyone who takes part access to information to make up their own minds about some of the big themes of life. With two amazing series’ delivered in the Spring and the Autumn, the Salon’s presented to audiences the big themes of ‘Explore, Discover and Experiment’ and ‘Memory Music and Magic’. Salon returns in January with the first event in our ‘Sharing, Caring and Daring’ series.

Moving into 2017 we look forward to developing these programmes further and endeavour to use our Generations theme as a platform. This theme will extend to our outreach and educational work as we cross generational boundaries with our participants and work to inspire younger generations, the audiences of our future.

Remember Us In Your Will

Some people would like to be remembered for their kindness, their jokes, their generosity, their excellent Sunday Dinners or simply the time they’ve spent with their family, but you could also be remembered for leaving a gift in your Will to Harrogate International Festivals.

By leaving a gift in your Will to Harrogate International Festivals you will be supporting the next generation of musicians, artists, novelists and your gift will touch the lives of many people. Your gift will enable us to touch more lives with the arts and to take our arts programmes to more disadvantaged young people whilst helping to ensure the work of the Festivals can continue.

A gift in a Will left to charity does not have to be a fixed amount of money; it could be a percentage of your estate when your family have been looked after, a specific sum, or a specific item.

Harrogate International Festivals is most appreciative of all gifts which are left to our work and could help us to change lives through the arts for generations to come.

We have a passion to ensure that the Festivals can achieve great things in the future, we cannot do it alone, but with your help we look forward to growing ever stronger, to share our rich future with you and with future generations.

To learn more about leaving a gift in your Will to Harrogate International Festivals please contact Lizzie on 01423 562303.

Emma Bridgewater Festival Mugs and ticket gift vouchers can be purchased through the office for all events.

Call 01423 562303 for further information.