Each year in my experience,2005, 2006 there have been high quality acts.
We do not know,when scarborough seafest,gets its allocated budget,from scarborough council.
It is impossible to book high quality acts without an appropriate budget.,this would I imagine tie the hands of the organisers somewhat.
This years as the co organiser of The Ballydehob Jazz festival,I experienced all these difficulties,Two grants that we applied for,we only were notified about, six weeks before the festival,this makes it very difficult to put a programme ahead in advance,our budget was 10,000, only 1500 became available in grants,I had many sleepless nights,worrying about how I was going to pay the artists.
I think it would be a nice way of saying thankyou for previous enjoyable years,to have faith in the organiser,and book regardless,
knowing that good quality acts were going to be booked anyway.
Personally as a professional musician,I appreciate anyone who puts work into organising and providing folk music for Joe public.