FESTIVAL IN FLUX

After 42 years of burning a beacon for the arts, can the Belfast Festival at Queen's maintain its position in the face of increasing competition? Festival director Stella Hall talks to Paul McNamee

The Belfast Festival at Queen's opens this year on October 22nd with a concert by the Ulster Orchestra and Neil Hannon. As a mission statement, it's not exactly an original and bold declaration of intent.

The festival is now in its 42nd year. It prides itself on being the jewel in Northern Ireland's arts calendar crown, boasting 300 artists or exhibitions from 20 nations in over 40 venues across Belfast during 18 days. It receives more funding (around £350,000) from governmental and arts agencies than any other event.

It is the third biggest collector of corporate sponsorship in the North and it has an annual turnover of £1.2 million. Yet for all the big sums in place, there is growing sense that it is losing ground to smaller, hipper festivals - the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in particular - that are clearer in focus and sharper in who they book. On top of that, Queen's Festival still carries old baggage. A feeling remains that it caters predominantly for a middle-class audience with a high-brow and narrow taste.

Not so, says Queen's director Stella Hall. This is a festival that is evolving and it won't let you down.

"When I arrived four years ago, there was a perception that the festival was aimed at a certain intellectual and geographical elite - from the leafy suburbs of south Belfast," she says. "We found that younger attendances had dropped off. Those who were attending when they were students were not continuing. We wanted to bring them back into the festival and to develop a festival that really did reach out to the widest possible audience. Yes it is big and broad, but so is the city.

"To be a truly representative festival for this city, a beacon for people here and a welcomer for people from elsewhere, then we need to be broad both artistically and in the levels and layers so that you have popular work in there and you have challenging work in there."

The good intentions of the festival are not in doubt, but it could be said that Hall is presiding over an event that lacks a wow factor. There is certainly an array of interesting, intriguing attractions - classical composer John Tavener will talk about his life and work; Dom Joly and Jimmy Carr perform and Paul Abbot, the award-winning screen-writer of Shameless and State Of Play, takes part in one of the BT Talks - but there is no truly international major player to make this festival a unique affair. Hall concedes this point, but considers it of minor importance.

"My view on what makes a festival special is that it's not just about big names that are touring and will drop into Belfast as part of the circuit," she says. "It's about identifying artists who chime with where Belfast is at and what the issues and ideas might be here. Of course we do look for big names and Ibrahim Ferrer from the Buena Vista Social Club is one this year - but I'm talking at the minute to a group from South Africa who have a play that looks at truth and reconciliation in South Africa. No big names there, but a piece of work that is very relevant to us and where we're heading."

Interestingly, though, the focus of Hall and her team's search for new audiences has moved beyond Belfast and out of Northern Ireland altogether. In 2000, just four per cent of the audience came from outside Northern Ireland - last year, this leapt to 21 per cent. With so many people coming from overseas, it's no surprise that this year's theme is "Journeys and Migrations".

"It seemed a very obvious starting point for an international audience as Belfast becomes more of a destination for people migrating to rather than from - as it once was," she says. "The upturn in numbers coincided with a huge opening up of cheap flights and a growing, sophisticated campaign by Tourism Ireland and the Northern Ireland tourist board to welcome visitors. Northern Ireland is a beautiful place to be. Belfast is a buzzing city."

Big words indeed from the PR-savvy director. So can Hall's unabashed enthusiasm and developing vision for Belfast ensure that the Queen's Festival sees off the threat from younger, nippier events, all of which are trying to compete for the same funding pie? It's not about competition, but co-operation, she says.

"Cathedral Quarter Arts is a very specific and complementary festival. Belfast has made a very clear statement that it is a city of festivals. We are part of a necklace of festivals that are strung through the year. We are the bright light in the autumn, but there are other twinklings going on at different times. With Cinemagic and Feile, the Cathedral Quarter, Between the Lines - there are lots of specialist festivals that all have their place and we're the culmination of all that."

Despite the holistic approach, Hall clearly sees the Queen's festival as the daddy. Her vision for the event is grand, but can it really hit home with the city's residents by insisting on being specifically "relevant" and appeal to overseas fans at the same time?

This year's programme will be the ultimate test of Hall's vision - with the superior status of the festival in the city's arts calendar at stake if she is wrong.