The latest survey by the British Arts Festivals Association highlights the growing popularity of arts festivals, and the diverse forms that they take. Of the 193 festivals that participated in the research, more than half were established after 1990, and more than a quarter were set up less than seven years ago.
In 2006/07 they presented almost 17,300 events, including 480 national premières and 1,250 world premières. A total of 5.1m attendances were recorded at these festivals, which between them incurred expenditure of just under £34m, only 25% of which came from the public sector. The biggest UK’s biggest arts festival is The Edinburgh Fringe, which last year featured 31,000 performances of 2,050 shows in 250 venues. The oldest is The Three Choirs Festival, which was founded in 1724, and the most remote is Shetland Folk Festival (pictured), which holds events in far-flung islands, including Unst, the UK’s northernmost inhabited island.