"Ruth, it sounds like you are doing something worthwhile ,well done,"

Ta, Dick. But you'll find that most small to mid-scale festival programmers are doing the exact same thing. There's this perception in some corners that all people programming folk care about is the big names and bums on seats. Well,we do have to make things work financially, but I'd like to think that we also care about artist development and the health of the sector.

Some festivals do a hell of a lot more than I do, because they have the capacity to do so - they'll programme a whole stage of local and up-and-coming artists. That kind of thing is incredibly valuable to those artists' careers.