Thank You!

After a couple of days post-Festival rest, the office has reopened and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank the many people who made the 2015 Festival such a huge success.

First, enormous thanks are due to our staff, both permanent and temporary, who work so hard throughout the Festival to ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible. This includes the Tech Team, for ensuring the Festival can be seen and heard, our Event Managers for making sure each venue and event is looked after, our Stage Managers for taking care of our authors behind the scenes, Chloe and her helpers for running the Playhouse tea bar and keep it supplied with amazing food, our Box Office Team who take 1000s of bookings over the course of the Festival and of course our Core Team who are in the office year round planning and organising each Festival. The staff at the many local venues we use, particularly the Kings Hall, Ilkley Playhouse and St Margaret’s, also deserve thanks for their tireless work in supporting the Festival.

We are, as ever, indebted to our fantastic Volunteers – from stuffing envelopes, distributing programmes, welcoming the audience, tearing tickets, creating fantastic flower arrangements, running the cafes (including making Brian Blessed’s tea!) and everything in between, the Festival could not manage without the 100+ people that give up their time to help us. We are very lucky to have such a fantastic bunch of people to call on!

But of course, the Festival would be nothing without the many writers, authors, poets and performers who find the time to come to Yorkshire. From big name stars to young emerging writers, it’s always a pleasure to welcome such incredibly talented people to Ilkley to share their work.

Finally, the biggest thank you is for our lovely and loyal audience. Your continued support year on year keeps the Festival going and your feedback helps us to grow and develop for the future. Each October it is great to see so many familiar faces at events and to meet people discovering the Festival for the first time!

We’ll be spending a month evaluating and then we’ll begin all over again-  planning Ilkley Literature Festival 2016, along with Words in the City (taking place in Bradford in June), delivering our one-off events and continuing our year round development work with teenager writers and with schools across Leeds and Bradford.

We look forward to seeing you in 2016!

-Rachel Feldberg, Festival Director