Harrogate International Festivals

Harrogate International Festivals (HIF) is Yorkshire's longest running arts festival and a registered charity that puts on festivals and events supported by a year-round programme of arts and cultural activities for young people and communities across the north of England. Festivals include the Harrogate Music Festival, Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Harrogate International Spring Series, Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival, Harrogate History Festival and a programme of outreach and new programmes under the banner of HIF+ including the Spiegeltent and Children’s Festival programmes. HIF also runs a broad programme of community outreach under the HIF+ programme including literacy, music and arts programmes for young people and communities with least access to the arts due to rural isolation, geographical location or social exclusion.

The Harrogate International Festival was set up in response to local demand to re-establish the quality of event that people had been used to between the wars in the town’s spa heyday. In 1966, with the help of composer Benjamin Britten and singer Peter Pears of Aldeburgh Festival fame, and financial support from Harrogate Borough Council and the Arts Council of England, Clive Wilson launched the Festival and became its first Director. In artistic terms the Festival has changed radically from its origins in the late sixties. The Festival dates (originally in mid-August) were chosen as they had to fit into the town’s conference & exhibition calendar (the summer gap after Gift Fair and before Carpet Fair). In its early days the Festival featured music, literature, drama, visual arts and science. However, over the following decades music came to the fore, making up around 90% of the programme.

In 1984 following a national Arts Council strategy review entitled “The Glory of the Garden” funding was withdrawn from all festivals north of Cheltenham. Up to that point Harrogate had received a guarantee against loss of £38,000, the biggest Arts Council grant of any festival in England. The loss of the grant demanded a more populist approach to programming in order to build ticket revenue and to enable the major scaling up of corporate sponsorship.

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