Clashing Pipe Band Championships and open-air Fleadh show 'greater than the sum of their parts': Alliance
Setting a Pipe Band Championships and open-air Fleadh show head to head will make them ‘greater than the sum of their parts’, Alliance has claimed.
The party’s councillor Chris McCracken made the comments as the clashing events were given a green light last night, though a huge outcry over the situation could see one of Northern Ireland’s councils revamp the way it runs large-scale tourist-friendly events.
An eight-hour open-air Irish folk show is to be staged on the same day as the 73rd annual Ulster Pipe Band Championships, each taking place just a few minutes’ walk from each other in Bangor on August 1. The all-Ireland Fleadh begins in Belfast the following day, the folk show tying in with it.
On Wednesday night, Bangor’s council overwhelmingly voted to hold them both at the same time, even though it could mean restricting pipe band parades, after officials concluded the fringe wouldn’t work on another date.
The move came as Alliance and unionists again had tetchy exchanges, with the former stating that keeping the events separate would break up a crowd-pulling “day of music”, while the DUP suggested a “weekend of music” with the two on different days could bring in even more people.
Mr McCracken last month accused people who were sceptical about the clash of secretly wanting to get rid of the fleadh altogether. This week, he suggested the fringe show would bring in tourists and be value for money.
That was rejected by DUP councillor Alistair Cathcart, who stated: “We don’t even know how much this is going to cost, we’re approving a rough estimate of a budget.
“I’m looking forward to this event, but I’m disappointed by how it came about. We knew it was coming for some time [but] we’re still fairly vague about how this will work.”
Unionists pushed through a move that could see Ards and North Down Council revamp its entire approach to tourist-friendly events, after the folk show was awarded £40,000 without a full breakdown of how that money will be spent
Several years ago, the council axed funding for a range of smaller festivals popular with their local community to focus on wooing people from outside the area. Community event organisers have since complained they struggle to jump through bureaucratic hoops to get grant money.
DUP councillor Jennifer Gilmour pointed to long-running bashes popular with the public in their respective areas that were scrapped, in part as they didn’t bring in tourists, such as Halloween fireworks on Holywood seafront and Donaghadee Lights Up festival.
“At the time we were told that budget and our capacity to deliver events was at a maximum,” she said. “That [the fringe] comes onto the agenda as one that we can then fit in flies in the face of what we’ve been told before.
“Concerns have been raised, especially in the volunteer-run sector.”
And the party’s alderman Stephen McIlveen said: “We have been told for years that the calendar was sacrosanct, and we couldn’t add anything in; something has been added in. A lot of people have been concerned about how an event could come about and a budget allocated.”