Brighton and Hove City Council has commissioned a draft Outdoor Events Strategy to 2024, giving people a chance to have their say on the future of outdoor festivals and events in the area. This will be presented to the Tourism, Development and Culture Committee in March.
The city hosts many hundreds of events throughout the year including the Marathon, Pride and Veteran Car Run.
The city council is examining the city’s future, its priorities, approach and the delivery structures needed to realise its potential.
Part of the report includes the concept of an Outdoor Events Charter. The first of its kind in the country, this is a public statement about what the council and organisers are trying to achieve through outdoor events and how. It will help organisers understand what the city expects from them to which events it publicly commits. It is also a tool to use with local communities who may be impacted by events, to show what is trying to be achieved and to create better relationships. The charter builds on petitions made to the council last year to ban single-use plastic and reuse and recycle at big events.
Ian Taylor, events manager, told Open Air Business: “We worked on this for six months in order to get people – from residents to outside visitors and stakeholders – to buy into our Outdoor Events Strategy. We’re in a good place. It has a broad programme of high quality events that deliver meaningful benefits to the community and attract tourists. If we want to achieve more in ensuring our outdoor events reach their full potential we have to be mindful of a number of broader economic, health, cultural, social, environmental and tourism agendas. To that end we asked businesses, industry professionals and members of the public about our vision, objectives and criteria for events, and any specific issues that they had. The response was overwhelmingly positive. It was quite heartening in fact, and not too far away from doing what we envisaged.”
