Here is the text of email that I have sent to Chris Wade:

"Chris

I thought it only polite to write and let you know that, since the announcement of the cancellation of the 2002 festival, a co-operative of Beverley publicans and traders and local folk enthusiasts have been talking together with a view to running the fringe events anyway. Our motivations for this are:

· To lessen the economic impact on the businesses in the town · To reduce the disappointment and disillusion of regular attenders at the festival · To provide some continuity so that the official 2003 festival has the best chance of succeeding in attracting an audience.

What we have in mind is to run the usual singarounds and sessions in the Sun, Tiger etc and to co-ordinate the activities of those pubs that normally book acts into their premises at weekends by suggesting appropriate local acoustics acts that they could use on that particular weekend.

We certainly have no intention of usurping the official festival – all activities will be open pub events with no charge. Indeed we will not use the B&ERFF name in any shape or form in our publicity.

We hope that you will see this as a positive move and one that will be to the benefit of the next official festival in 2003. As folk enthusiasts we wish you every success in planning that next festival and it will have our full support as always.

It would be nice if you could help to publicise the fringe event by, perhaps, putting a ps on the festival website inviting people to visit Beverley anyway and join in with the sessions.

All the best

Roger Busby (for the folk co-operative)"

hope everyone is happy with that

Roger