I do think Mr Higham makes a good point, but I do wonder why he appears to be so angry six weeks after the event. I think Sandra has tried to address his complaints and I'm sure we can create a better situation in our "wonderful Scola marquee" next year.

I spend twelve months planning the festival and then get four days to build the entire infrastructure. This is a challenging job, and almost invariably I have to make some compromise from the original plan. I was very upset when the stage height was incorrect this year but decided to keep the rest of the plan together. You will appreciate (I hope) that making changes with only hours to spare is very difficult.

I try to put together an event which offers something for everyone and allows our visitors to enjoy the festival in their own way; Standing or seated, loud or quiet, traditional or contemporary, English, Scottish, Welsh or world music. The festival is not just one venue, in fact, it is very much more than one venue.

There would seem to be several things we could do to change the audience environment in the main marquee.

1. Stop inviting high energy bands to the festival. This would stop those people who insist on standing (and boping) at the front, but this would deprive our audience from some excellent performances.

2. Ban any standing at the front in the main marquee, harsh and almost impossible to enforce.

3. Continue with what has happened in recent years where people stand up right in front of the seated audience and completely block their view.

4. Open a third marquee (Dance House) for the high energy acts only, where it would be standing only. This would deprive the seated audience from seeing the high energy stuff.

5. Add tiered seating (too expensive at £40,000 for the main marquee)

What I want to do is allow all of our seated audience to see artists on stage from the very first row. We can achieve this by making the stage higher, limiting the moshing area, buy using the back row crowd control barriers, as we did this year, and maintaining a three metre distance from the crowd barrier to the first seated row. I also intend adding giant screens next year either side of the stage, so that our audience can see the artist's faces.

I will try my very best to give our audiences all that can be done within physical and financial constraints. I hate disappointing people. I will never stop trying to improve the festival. The vast majority of our audiences are happy with progress so far.

All the Best

Alan