Dear Madam, - On behalf of our Board of Directors, Lead Volunteers Committee, visiting and local artists, the festival staff and myself, I would like to express our thanks through the auspices of your newspaper to the people of Enniskillen for their immediately warm and enthusiastic embrace of their inaugural A Wilde Weekend Festival of 2015.

A Wilde Weekend caught the imagination of the people from the town and the visiting audiences who attended in great numbers through the weekend, even ignoring the rain! Enniskillen has always been so open to myself and my team in offering up its wonderful buildings and spaces to be animated by some of the world’s leading writers, actors and musicians. The friendliness of the people of Fermanagh is a winning ingredient to the success of these festivals for our visiting audiences.

All the feedback we have received has been very positive and we will pass this on to our core funders Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, Tourism NI and Arts Council of Northern Ireland, who we are very grateful to for their support.

However, we all now need to persuade our core funders to improve their funding more realistically from next year in order to guarantee the longevity of this new festival for Fermanagh. Current levels of funding fall far short to continuing the festival into the future. But this year’s festival was always to be a pilot festival so we hope it has impressed enough our funders for what the future can hold.

It was so great to see a number of the local traders make colourful Wildean displays. I really do thank those who made these efforts as this is so very important for visitors to feel the town is behind the festival. It brought a smile to the faces of myself and my team.

A note for everyone’s diaries: The Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival will run from July 23 – August 05 2015 with tickets for the highlights on sale by May 15.

We look forward to your continued support in presenting these world class festivals in Enniskillen and firmly placing the town on the international cultural destination map.

Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the arts that have influenced us’ OSCAR WILDE.

Yours faithfully, Sean Doran Founding Director A Wilde Weekend