The Belfast Festival at Queen's has appointed a new director, Ms Stella Hall, currently director of the Warwick Arts Centre at the University of Warwick. She will take up the post from September on a five-year contract.
The position has come to be seen as something of a "poisoned chalice". The festival is run by a board at Queen's University, which has been slow to appoint a full-time director on a permanent contract.
Mr Sean Doran, who is now director of the Perth International Festival in Australia, left the post of programme director after two years in 1998 because he was only being offered temporary contracts.
By contrast, the executive director, Mr Robert Agnew, who retired last January, and the assistant executive director, Ms Rosie Turner, had permanent jobs and filled in the gaps between programme directors themselves.
Ms Hall sees her role during this autumn's festival as "supporting Rosie [Turner] . . . and using the time to get to know people".
Ms Hall professes to be unaware of the festival's reputation of catering predominantly for the south Belfast middle class. Robert Agnew, asked some years ago how he would respond to a challenge by a Sinn Fein councillor, Mairtin O Muilleoir, that the festival had nothing to offer his constituents, said: "They have the very excellent West Belfast Festival".
Ms Hall said yesterday: "I would say, let's make sure we have something that is relevant to them. And what relationships can we build with the West Belfast Festival?"
Mr Doran's festival programmes were criticised for their radicalism - and more for the financial burden they placed on the festival - but Ms Hall said: "The spirit was right. It was what caught my attention and brought me across the water."