The 40th Anniversary Harbour Festival has now been and gone for 2011.
We’ve gasped at the trapeze acts at the Castle Park circus stage, or applauded our favourite band at one of the many music stages. We’ve had our fill of continental food or local drink, and danced like there’s no tomorrow. We’ve caught up with old friends and made some new ones, and we’ve seen more boats and water-borne activity than you could shake a stick at.
We hope you enjoyed the festival and would ask that you spare a few minutes to complete our feedback survey
Over 250,000 people are estimated to have attended this year. The number of residents and visitors it attracts to the city brings great financial benefit to the economy as well as the cultural / social benefits of holding a festival. The reductions in council funding from government means we will have less money to spend organising the festival in the future and so there will need to be some changes. We will also need to look at fund raising for the festival and issues such as paid-for fringe and evening events – we saw these being extended this year and many of them were really popular. The 2011 festival was achieved through partnership working with businesses and the city’s cultural and community organisations – we’ll need to develop our joint-working to an even greater extent in future festivals:
We’re looking for your feedback from the 2011 festival:
- What did you think of it?
- What did you like most?
- What lessons can we learn for the future?
- What ideas do you have for boosting fund-raising for the festival?
- How could income from the festival be increased to help cover its costs?
We’re also hoping to better understand the economic benefits and have included a few questions in the survey about this.
Please give us feedback by completing the survey and then join in the public conversation by leaving a comment below.
Your responses will be invaluable in planning future festivals! This slideshow requires JavaScript.
in order to promote healthier eating habits could we reduce then number of junk food outlets on site? Why is the French market so overpriced. Buying gourmet olives and nuts in Waitrose is cheaper!
The cross-harbour ferry from SS Great Britain was totally inadequate and could not cope with the potential customers on Saturday afternoon – the queues were very very long. We were not prepared to wait, and consequently did not manage to get to the LLoyds Amphitheatre. Despite this criticism, the Festival was brilliant, as always, and something of which Bristol should be proud.
Bristol Den
I am so glad so many people enjoyed it. I liked the old lifeboats and the sound of folk music from near the Pump Hose but not much else .. This was partly because I had not researched where to go so that on arrivng down at Hotwells I simply walked along to the Lloyds building. That is clearly my fault – but as we struggled to walk through the crowds the litter and the drunkeness wore thin. Every litter bin was overflowing. Most benches had litter and take away rubbish under neath them. The food stalls looked uninviting and no doubt most of them , having paid I imagine quite a lot to be there were trying to make as much money as possible. On Sunday afternoon I felt the atmosphere there was unpleasant. There did’nt seem to me to be enough to do – except drink and buy overpriced food.
I would like to have seen more ‘audience participation’. Perhaps gig racing or more local teams competing. I think the person who suggested open water swimming has made a good suggestion.
I always stand to cheer the half marathon runners and usually that day has a great, up beat atmosphere. But the harbour festival was sad.
It would have been nice to have seen the programme lineup and timings say a week before the festival so that we could plan the day a bit more. Not living in the area we were not able to get one in advance. Maybe it could be made available online?
Also there was not enough information about the music acts and the type of music they were playing. We went to Rogue’s Salute which was overpriced for the amount of entertainment provided, but the pricing is probably not in the control of the festival organisers.
Sorry to moan, we did have an enjoyable day overall!
Good
-queens square, the harbour itself
-the weather
-Bike parking was nonexistent. There was better bike parking at the st werburgh’s farm event than there was at the harbour
-tap water spots would help look after kids. There was more free water for dogs than people.
-cars on the harbour car park should be moved to help pedestrian flow.
Could you please make the tides a bit later as getting up at 05.00 monday morning to sail back to chepstow was a killer, Cheers
As a grumpy old man, firstly I tell what I did not like. I would like to find full programme in the Festival website before I decide, which attractions are suited to me. Printed programme is a very good idea, but in my opinion donation would be much better than regular price.
What is sad to me, in this rich, multicultural programme, I did not found any Easter Europe artists performance.
I think, Sainsbury’s and Tesco should involve or/and participate in costs of this Festival. It should be honour to them, not an obligation.
Festival’s idea is great, but concerts in the main stage in the Queen Square should be finish later, e.g. 11.00 or 12.00pm.
Anyway, full respect to your whole team.
It’s difficult to think of new ideas to add to events which are already fantastic from the minute they begin until when they close for another year. Maybe next year you can do something with Cabot Tower now that it has been updated. Possibly a para gliding display, tight rope walking display, aerial runway or better still and perfect for dates to match… how about turning Cabot Tower in to an Olympic Flame for the duration of the event? That’ll be cool. Starting on Friday night using digital lighting techniques and keep it running until after the Balloon Fiesta a week later. Bristol’s very own olympic flame to support local and national events.
I loved it – congratulations to all those involved in its planning and to all the performers and entertainers. I didn’t think it lost much with the loss of the fireworks and think business should cover the cost of these as they must make an absolute packet from it.
In terms of changes. I welcome events / activities, particularly on the Sat evening when there’s not much on after 5pm, which you pay a small amount towards. There needs to be a section in the festival programme for ‘when the sun goes down’ listing what there is to do later. Tens of thousands of people were milling around lost after all the stages finished, except Amphitheatre. We wandered over there, but the venue was not really designed to cope with the numbers. The scheduling was also poor at the Amphitheatre with too much ‘here’s what we want you to listen to’ world music rather than stuff people like. I wonder if it was to keep the crowds down? Some of the acts would have been great on a Sat or Sun afternoon, but barber shop quartets are not ideal for a Sat night.
I’d be happy to pay £5 a ticket for some live music on Sat night – something a bit more populist. Perhaps an area of the car park behind M-Shed could be used for this or College Green – it would have to be fenced off during the day. It would give people somewhere to go and a different option to carry on drinking.
Finally, it was a great idea to have a stage at SS Great Britain but catching a ferry afterwards or across to the other side was really difficult.
Do the chains like Tesco, Sainsburys, Wetherspoons, Pitcher Piano contribute as well – as they must make a packet from it. Every little helps!
Thanks for the feedback and the ideas Jane. I’m beginning to like the idea of maybe offering people the choice of a paid for element in the evening, at a modest charge, instead of just stopping at 6pm or so.
We did seek sponsorship from local companies – and 30+ paid £1,000 each (for which huge thanks!) but we’re not able by law to actually levy a compulsory levy.
Utterly brilliant!
Music should go on a bit later
Would it be possible to have some open water swimming? It’s a growing sport and there are a number of venues hosting mass participation events, for example London Docklands. The popularity of the sport is also likely to grow following Kerianne Payne’s gold medal in the 10k event at the recent World Championships in Shangai. Next year’s Olympics are also likely to give the sport a boost. It also fits well with government policy of getting more people involved in sport.
Funny you should mention that Marian. We have this year, for the second time, hosted a stretch of a triathlon in the floating harbour – largely because the water quality is improving (as judged by the family of otters now confirmed as living in the harbour feeding off the fish). It is still not clean enough to want to encourage swimming generally, and we’d have to make sure that the huge amount of boat traffic didn’t end up with an unintended consequence, but I think it is a serious suggestion, so I promise to give it proper consideration.
I went to the harbour festival and really enjoyed it. Particularly the music in Queen’s Square on Friday night and the folk music I saw on the SS Great Britain Stage. This year I used the ferry to get around which I’d never done before and did enjoy. I did think the SS Great Britain stage was difficult to get to and from and it was a bit of a waste with such good acts (Jane Taylor and Phil King) playing to a relatively small crowd. If it was somewhere more central like king street they may have had bigger audiences. I had to wait a long time to get on the ferry back from the ss Great Britain, with lots of other people waiting to get across the water.
Fringe events like the Rogues Salute need to start later particularly as they encourage people to get dressed up – it was a different format and time scale to previous invisible circus events (which usually have a finale) there was not enough going on at the end of the event, and I was disappointed, particularly as I’d told so many people how good it would be and then was not what I had expected.
I think the music at the harbour festival could also include a few things that are a bit more main stream with more appeal. At some of the things I saw the audience seemed to be more keen to drink and talk to friends than listen to the music. Maybe some comedy shows could be included in the future as well as music?
I think the circus stuff in castle park is a good addition to the festival.
Overall a very good festival, it’s great to have things like this going on in Bristol, particularly for free. My friends who were visiting got a very good impression of the city. I don’t think it mattered much that there weren’t fireworks.