Manchester's Food and Drink Festival and Pride Parade are among a string of events which have lost council funding as part of town hall spending cuts.
The Manchester Comedy Festival, Queer Up North and the city's Family Friendly Film Festival will also lose funds, the M.E.N can reveal.
Manchester town hall chiefs have had to review the list of events they give cash to as the council strives to save £170m over the next two years.
While St George's Day, Chinese New Year, the Christmas lights switch-on and Manchester Day, launched last year, are among those that will retain funding - it means others will lose out.
The council will continue to fund Manchester Jazz Festival after dozens of people wrote in in support of it.
However, the parade element of Manchester's annual Pride event – which costs £600,000 overall to stage - will lose £32,000. The council said there was nothing to suggest the parade would be cancelled.
A spokesperson from Manchester Pride said: “Pride is a vital event in the civic calendar but Manchester, like every local authority, is facing some tough financial choices.
“Losing the council’s grant is a frightening prospect because we’d rather focus on creating a spectacular event than fund-raising to fill a gap. Come what may, Manchester Pride’s 21st birthday will be one to remember.”
The Food and Drink Festival, which has celebrated the city's dining scene for the past 13 years, will lose £32,000 funding, of a total £200,000 running costs. The Comedy Festival and Queer Up North gay arts festival will each lose £25,000.
Phil Jones, director of the Manchester Food and Drink Festival, said: “We're obviously not happy about the funding cuts as it means we will have to do the same work for less money.
“But there will be a food and drink festival in 2011, the cuts are a small portion of our budget and we have some great sponsors lined up already.”
Coun Rosa Battle, Manchester council's assistant executive member for culture and leisure, said: “Manchester's world-class events programme is rightly praised across the city, the country and indeed the world.
“We are still committed to providing funding to events across the city, but the nature of the government's financial settlement means we cannot offer the same level of financial support to all of those who previously received funding from us or help new event ideas along as we might previously have been able to do.”
She continued: “In coming to these decisions, we have taken on board a number of factors, such as the likelihood of the events taking place without funding and the community element of the festivals.”
The Family Film Festival, in summer holidays, will lose £4,000. Exposures student film festival and Viva Spanish and Latin film event will also lose money. The Eurocultured arts festival, over May bank holiday, which until three years ago received £7,500 from the council, will get no more funding. Manchester International Festival, which receives money through a different council budget, is not affected.
More than 130 event days will still receive town hall funding this year. They are estimated to be worth £48m to the city and expected to attract over 750,000 people.
Events that will continue to receive money are: St George's Day; Manchester Jazz Festival; Caribbean Carnival; Summer Mega Mela; Diwali Mela; International Women's Day; Pensioners' Christmas Party; Holocaust Memorial Day; Chinese New Year; Irish Festival Parade; Manchester Day; Christmas lights (including switch-on); FutureEverything; 24:7 Theatre Festival; Manchester Literature Festival; X-Trax Street Theatre Festival.
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Type your comment here...BEST NEWS I'VE HEARD ALL WEEK!!!!
Perhaps the shops, hotels and bar owners who make a killing over that weekend could and should split the the difference. 32k isn't much when you're all raking it in.
Queue the howls of "we can't afford it" from the bar owners(around the Gay Village) Please.
Type your comment here... THEY BARE NOT CUTTING ENOUGH THOUGH. SCRAP IT ALL TOGETHER - THE PRIDE PARADE AND ALL THE OTHER DODGY-GENDERED OUTFITS!
the whole pride event has become a rip off now anyway ! i really could not care less.more fool on the people that have to pay to get in to bars and areas they go every week.
This event has needed to be swept into the gutter and down the grid since it's inception. Manchester needs to clean it's image up and getting rid of this event is the best possible start in doing so.
It reads to me that the organisers are pragmatic about the loss of funding and will just get on with it - and good luck to them.
I've no doubt, many of those involved have had bigger obstacles to overcome, so, those of us who do attend - and have a fantastic time - will just have to dig a little deeper to ensure the event thrives.
This is where the cuts should be. I have been thinking about this preposterous makeover in Eastlands to create 1,000s of jobs. I grew up round there. There were 32,000 in Beswick alone every morning 1,000s walked to the cotton mills lining Bradford road, 1,000s more to factories in Newton Heath,Openshaw,Clayton. All gone.
The assault on the cotton industry began with Wedgwood Benn and others backing Ghandi in the 30s throwing 100sof 1,000s of mill workers out od jobs. After the war they gave 25% of the cotton quota to HongKong, putting more out of work, then they had fatuous schemes to put spindles out of action.
The cotton industry was the mainstay of this country. In 1913 80% of the worlds cotton exports came from Lancashire.
If they had spent money subsidising and building new factories after the war instead of wasting the expensive loans they received from USA and Canada in 6 months on idealogical nightmares, and if money had been used wisely instead of on gender bending, and false equality we would not be in the mess we are.
The plain truth is. The left wing lost the economic argument, so they decided they could control people with political correctness.
Being gay myself I am really glad to learn at least part of the Pride Festival will lose funding - I actually wish the whole event would be cancelled. Why should people be forced to pay to enter an area that they regularly frequent? Why should that fee be so high? Why does everyone need to dress up in drag and blow whistles in the faces of heterosexuals, what i?s accomplished by that. Pride is an ugly stereotype-creating, frivolous embarrassment to all concerned.
These sort of events are really for the 'Big Society'. Volunteers with the local authority simply facilitating the events by allowing the event organisers to put up signage and close roads.
Anyone who has been involved in organising such things will recognise tha the council dedicates far too much money and too many people to these things which sap enthusiasm.
The council are right not to fund these events. Why my taxes be paid to support events that predominently benefit businesses in the city centre. Let those businesses fund the events.
Local government should stick to its core activities street lights, street cleaing, parks, schools, social services, support of the vulnerable, planning developement control, and car parks, send it all out to contract Bury style and forget the rest.
No money at should go to Events that will continue to receive money ie: St George's Day; Manchester Jazz Festival; Caribbean Carnival; Summer Mega Mela; Diwali Mela; International Women's Day; Pensioners' Christmas Party; Holocaust Memorial Day; Chinese New Year; Irish Festival Parade; Manchester Day; Christmas lights (including switch-on); FutureEverything; 24:7 Theatre Festival; Manchester Literature Festival; X-Trax Street Theatre Festival.
Stick to the core activities pleaselike Trafford mainly does.
I can see why it would be a blow to some, but we need essential services now. There shouldn't be icing on anyone's cake for some time yet. If you have a culture, a sexual orientation or just a hobby then that's ok. Just support it.
about bloody time why should tax payers pay for filling pubs shops and bars!!!
What an absolute disgrace, The LGBT people of manchester pay there taxes like most other people and quite a lot of tax to.
Why are LGBT people being sngled out, yet other minoraty groups are not, We know the answer to that, If they have to do cuts then it should be spread across all minoraty groups not just one.
Hmmmm why just cut the funding to Pride and Food and Drink festival why not cut funding to all the events that the Council fund, NO cause it will mean a big hoo haa from the Asian community for the two events that the council funds the Summer Mega Mela and Diwali Mela.
Fundamentally, Pride raises a fortune every year for Manchester charities that need it, so it's good news that Pride are making it clear it will still go ahead. And for those rather odd people talking about "gender bending" and the like, tens of thousands of people come to watch the parade every year and it's a representation of everyone in Manchester, not just gays. And they seem to enjoy it. Maybe you guys should lose your prejudices and come along. You might enjoy it! (and maybe be a little bit more comfortable about yourselves as some of you clearly have issues)
There is another side to this story. The amount Manchester City Council charges Manchester Pride has more than doubled since 2005.
The council charged £13,600 in 2005 and £33,300 in 2010. This does not include rubbish collection, which is an extra cost of between £6000 and £9000 per year. Even if you exclude the rubbish collection, in four out of the last six years the City Council has clawed back more in charges than it gave the event.
In 2004 Greater Manchester Police charged Pride £20,000. By 2010 the figure had risen to £52,500.
Inflation over five years would be about 15%. So why have the charges increased more than 100%?
"Steady it will upset the bigots on here to discover that pride actually pays more to the city than it takes" Matt Hulme
Do you mean the pro-homosexuals bigots or the anti-homosexual bigots?
Sorry that is mental, theres a shed load more Gay/Lesbians than Jazz fans in Manchester...yet they still keep all there funding ? Wtf ? And manchester day ? Oh yeah all us Mancs rush out for that dont we ??
Events like this (and minority groups) do need help to get them off the ground. However, after a while, they should become self-funding or be allowed to expire due to an obvious 'lack of interest'.
MCC needs to take a serious look at all the events & groups it funds (listed by more than one poster on here already) and treat each one as a business decision. If Pride does, as claimed, bring in more than it costs then maybe it does warrant financial funding.
Having said that, if an event that attracts tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people cannot be sellf-funding after all these years, something is seriously wrong.
This comment isn't anti-gay, or particularly anti-anything, but costs need to be cut at MCC and they need to remind themselves that throwing money at something doesn't necessarily make it better or solve a problem. Unfortunately, that seems has become the train of thought by local & central Government over the last few years.
Well that's a start,or is it just a sop?
the outrage I feel is that the council ever funded them in the first place? Why would these people and these events ever need funding? Its shows how out of control Manchester Looney Labour council has been for years but the idiotic voters still vote them in, bit like United fans will pay for and watch anything starring a red shirt.
Yet again M.C.C expecting the Public to do their job for them so they are not seen to get their hands dirty, by being responsible for the cuts,.
Still no mention about cutting anything to do with the Cllrs or Officers of the Council's wages or expenses.
Just a couple more figures to put this into perspective. The running costs of the ticketed Manchester Pride 2007 were £708,000. Five years earlier, in 2002, running costs for the free to enter Mardi Gras were just £106,000. And according to the article above, the cost of the parade alone is now £600,000!
So I don't think losing £32,000 is really that much of an issue. They can just cut some of the costs they have added since 2002.
The charity amount is the one thing that never increases much. Pride raises much the same as 15 years ago.
The Irish Festival day parade ( which I take it as being St. Patrick's and the Manchester Day parade are both advertisement for global brands (one a drinks company and the other a car company). Why are they not paying to total cost of these parades. And the other thing is the council has put out press releases bring something like £50 million into the City. Where has all that money gone as Manchester is still one of the most deprived cities in England. It definitely has not gone to the residents.
Patrick Sudlow,
Hulme Green Party.