An Oscar Wilde Festival is to go ahead in Fermanagh on the May Bank Holiday weekend so that Enniskillen can “claim” the famous author before another location does.

With £60,000 in the bag, Festival Director Sean Doran wants to build on the success of the Beckett Festival, which the Northern Ireland Tourist Board said generated £1.25 million of quality weighted coverage outside of the island of Ireland last year.

Organisers want local traders and the Council to get on board by transforming Enniskillen into a ‘Wildeflower Town’ from May 1-4 with flower displays and a fairytale theme in shop windows.

“The Wilde Festival has been in the thought processes for over a year now. I am very pleased with how we’ve brought it together with a budget that is only 20 per cent of the Beckett budget. But it was important to get it started this year regardless of minimal funding in order that it is claimed for Enniskillen and not elsewhere,” Sean Doran tells the Impartial Reporter.

“The word on the Beckett Festival is very much getting out there and there are others elsewhere looking at opportunities. Therefore, you might as well get Wilde claimed for Enniskillen, rather than have it suddenly pop up somewhere else.” Speaking from Paris, Mr. Doran explains that he will return to Enniskillen in the coming weeks to oversee the Wilde Weekend. Meanwhile, preparations for August’s Happy Days Beckett Festival are in full flow, with an international sponsor to be announced soon.

“We are really happy with the lively, diverse programme which will show a wide range of Wilde. The potential for the long-term is really super,” Mr. Doran states.

The Wilde Weekend festival has secured funding of £35,000 from The Arts Council and £25,000 from Fermanagh and Omagh District Council (FODC). The Council has also offered in-kind services of up to £25,000.

“It’s a smaller festival than the Beckett Festival but we decided to go ahead given that Wilde went to school here for seven years; twice as long as Beckett,” Mr. Doran explains. “Wilde is much more widely known and appeals to a much wider audience. When people see the brochure, it has a much more homely feel to it. It picks up on what is already there in Fermanagh, hence in the opening pages we’ve created a ‘Fermanagh fairytale’ aspect with a map of ‘castles and dreams’.” He continues: “Wilde’s dorm room would have been up on the third level of Portora looking straight across at Coles Monument, the inspiration for his most popular story The Happy Prince. That’s why we will have local artist Alan Milligan guild the statue in gold. He will create a temporary installation in the next few weeks,” says Mr. Doran, adding: “I think if that became a permanent feature, The Happy Prince would be a fantastic tourist attraction.” Mr. Doran has also been in discussions with the management of The Clinton Centre about creating a permanent literature centre in Enniskillen. His proposal “is getting very positive responses” and Deloitte will carry out a feasibility study soon.

“In order to build on the two festivals, you could have a 365 day round attraction of a literature centre which acts as an epicentre that engages with Beckett and Wilde in Enniskillen as well as W.B Yeats in Sligo, Brian Friel in Donegal and John McGahern in Leitrim,” he explains.

Asked why he persists in promoting Fermanagh, Mr. Doran replies: “This is as about creating something for a place and matching an event to place. It’s for the arts to be a really successful vehicle for tourism and to attract people to Fermanagh who would not usually come.

“It is is a driving passion of mine to provide something of quality for communities who are not in a capital city. I’ve worked in capital cities, in opera houses and festival theatres and it’s grand, but there’s a very major contingent of provided audience and plenty of provision. I think it’s important to get provisions of the highest quality spread across communities.” He encourages Enniskillen businesses to “let their imagination run Wilde” by dressing up their windows with flowers and fairytale scenes such as Cinderella glass slippers, Rapunzel long hair, Alice in Wonderland ‘drink me’ bottles, Snow White apples, Aladdin lamps and Hansel and Gretel gingerbread.

Mr. Doran concludes: “When an audience comes in from outside, they love that. It really endears them to see that the town is not the same when the festival is on. It encourages them to speak more highly of a place and to return to it.” The festival website is wildeweekendenniskillen.com