post-3llw

five days now since the literature weekend finished up, and while we can barely see the floor of the main office because of the boxes of books yet to be returned to publishers, the feeling is that our wee weekend has once again been a success, despite intermittent rain for our outdoor events and two events unfortunately being cancelled, one due to numbers, one due to illness.

While it will take another week to work out how things might have gone financially (this whole venture is done on a shoestring), once again the Lichfield Festival has generated new audiences, promoted high calibre events at a time other than summer, promoted an art form desparate for support in this city, and kick started an annual offering of education work (280 students from five schools), all reasons why we started the literature weekend three years ago. It seems that we also have a 16% increase in tickets purchased. We'll eventually post a full round up on the Festival website.

Audience questions throughout the weekend were excellent and engaging, and from the comments we've so far received, audiences enjoyed all the speakers. The flip side is also true - author comments we've received show that they really enjoyed the Lichfield audiences, and for that matter Lichfield. It was a surprise to me that the majority of this year's authors were visiting Lichfield for the first time.

I still wish that I could programme more fiction with more confidence in the audiences that might come. Perhaps this sill be something I specifically tackle when we do this event again next autumn.