The Henley Festival was initially a three-day ?opera plus food? event, following the historic Henley Royal Regatta. With funding exclusively from the box office and sponsors, the Festival staggered through the 1980s before sponsorship fell away during the 1990s, leaving the event badly exposed. All debts were written off in the early 1990s. It then took on a much more independent line and has since been transformed into a large and sophisticated festival, writes Rachel Shimell.
In came a state-of-the-art, outdoor stage, a new commercially minded board of management and an Artistic Director determined to extend the range of artists and artforms, while recognising the importance of local support and national and international awareness.
Now in its twenty-second year, and with an expected turnover this year of over £1.5m, the Henley Festival has some singular boasts ? including one ticket giving access to all events at any one of the five evening and two daytime sessions. The longest of these runs for eight hours on a Saturday evening, with anything up to 15 programmed events in four venues. It is all accompanied by a substantial visual and street-arts programme. Catering remains a vital ingredient ? the Festival can cater for a quarter of its 5,000 capacity audience in top-quality restaurants in addition to a range of smaller eateries and bars. And it regularly commits more than £50,000 per annum to its year-round community and outreach programmes, all of which are administered by its charitable parent, the Friends of the Henley Festival.
The Festival earns 50% of its turnover from ticket sales and over 30% from sponsorship, much from the local Thames Valley area. The remainder comes from catering and hospitality (around 9%), as well as sales of visual art, donations, moorings, car-park passes and programme sales.
So, on the one hand, this is a champagne festival with patrons dressing up for glamorous nights with top-name stars like Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and José Cura. On the other, it is a bona fide high-arts festival complete with a multi-artform programming and commissioning policy, underpinned by a terrific reputation within the local community for its active and innovative outreach programme. The Festival is significantly bankrolled by its corporate sponsors and its format has evolved in such a way that they can be entertained in the premium restaurants, whilst elsewhere really setting to and experimenting with the artforms.
Chief Executive Sam Gordon Clark, who is responsible for raising the bulk of the corporate funds, comments, ?There?s no doubt that our work in the community gives a great deal of credibility to what the Festival does, but essentially it has developed in such a way that we can market it to the people who are bored with conventional days out and want something different. As long as the economy stays buoyant, we are in a very strong and secure position.?
Rachel Shimell of RM Communications is PR consultant to the Henley Festival which runs this year July 7?11. t: 01491 843400; e: rachel.shimell@ntlworld.com;
w: http://www.henley-festival.co.uk