Stendhal organisers question council ‘fairness’

The Sentinel, in an exclusive front page story a few weeks ago, broke news that a new ‘Countryside Festival’ was coming to Ballykelly this summer. Last week, this newspaper also revealed that Limavady Borough Council had agreed, in principle, to award £15,000 worth of funding to the new festival - double the £7,500 worth of ‘deficit funding’ available for Stendhal - winner of the Best Small Festival in Ireland award.

This prompted a storm of online commentary from Sentinel readers, election candidates and others.

Below is the full statement, issued to this newspaper by John Cartwright, head of PR and Communications for the Stendhal Festival: “Since it was announced that a new festival set to have its first year one week after Stendhal this year has been awarded £15,000 at the first time of asking from Limavady Borough Council, we have been getting a few requests to talk about it in the press regarding our attitude towards it.

“We aren’t looking to rise a row here over money, what we will do, however, is point out the facts and let people make up their own mind as to whether or not they think that what has occurred is fair, not only to us, but any local people in Limavady who look to council to be a fair body who look after the interests of local people.

“Firstly, we wish the organisers of The Countryside Festival all the success in the world – it looks like it will be a great event which will bring tourists to the borough and that must be supported by everyone locally as we look to expand on our growing tourism industry.

“Limavady Borough Council have chosen to support a businesses which is not local to the area, to the tune of double the amount of funding (perhaps more, as we will explain) than it has ever supported us with, at the first time of asking.