The aim of the fund is to help support and stimulate community festivals and events across Dumfries & Galloway taking place between 1 June 2021 and 31 March 2022
The Community Events Fund has been introduced in recognition of the important role community festivals and events can play in support of community life and wellbeing across Dumfries & Galloway in the aftermath of the Covid-19pandemic.
The Fund can assist well-established events to continue in 2021/2022, and provide grant-support to ensure that best practice planning can take place that reassures the public, to enable these events to retain their visitors.
The Fund will also seek to support new and one-off events that provide one means of support for communities to come together to enjoy sport for health and wellbeing, arts and culture or locally important heritage.
In the first two years of its operations the Dumfries and Galloway Major Festivals and Events Strategy 2018-2021, which is managed and delivered by Dumfries and Galloway Council:
Made 28 grant awards to 19 different events projects
Was directly responsible for close to 50,000 visitors being attracted to Dumfries and Galloway to attend the funded events (this does not include 1000s more we could not record visiting free to view events)
Funded four events that generated more than £1m for the regional economy – Wigtown Book Festival (2018 and 2019), Spring Fling (2019), Skiffieworlds – the 2019 World Coastal Rowing Championships and Electric Fields 2018
Attracted two World Championships to Dumfries and Galloway – Skiffieworlds and the International Ice Hockey Federation’s Women’s Under 18’s World Championship Division II Group A and the first Stage of the Tour of Britain 2019. The Galloway Hills Rally became the final Round of the British Rally Championship in 2019
Created a new process to identify the best smaller scale events with the best chance of sustainable growth – the Regional Growth Events programme – the four events identified by this process and now receiving three year funding are Annan Harbour Festival, Castle Douglas Food Festival, D-Lux Festival of Light and NithRaid River Festival
