Viv Hardwick talks to Hartlepool’s Dockfest organiser, Stephen Cashman, about the bigger plans for next year’s Tall Ships Race event.

DOCKFEST, this weekend’s £145,000 of free entertainment based at Hartlepool’s Marina, is a test to see how the town is going to cope when an anticipated one million people come to see 100 competitors in the Tall Ships Race moored there on August 7-10 next year.

“There are elements which are a test. You’ve asked if it’s a dry run, but it’s more likely to be wet because it rained so much last year. In 2008, we had monsoon conditions, so we thought we had to create something which, to the best of our ability, was protected from the weather.

That’s where the big tent idea came from,” says Hartlepool Council’s strategic arts manager Stephen Cashman The answer is a massive tent housing an evening of music for 1,800 standing guests on Saturday, with the Lightning Seeds headlining, and Big Mouth Comedy Club on Sunday with TV comedy show contestant and stand-up Sean Lock topping the bill. With stand-ups, of course, the 850 audience is seated.

There’s also a Sunday afternoon show with BBC1’s Big Howard, Little Howard.

There are free tickets for the Sunday shows, by phoning 01429- 890-000 between 10am-4.30pm, with all remaining tickets released on the day at Hartlepool’s Martitime Experience (noon for the 4.30pm show and 3pm for the 7.30pm show). Cashman is confident that those without tickets should still be able to enjoy what’s going on if they stand in the area outside the tent. Giant video screens are being considered for next year because the budget, around £250,000, and star names on the bill are going to be bigger.

“We want to see what happens if you have big name acts to see if that takes the event to a new level. I could tell you who we are negotiating for, but you’d have to kill me afterwards,” he jokes.

“The Tall Ships are going to attract a million or more visitors to the town. It’s going to do something really rather radical and special to Hartlepool, but it does mean that people won’t be able to get from A to B in the normal way. The idea of putting on entertainment was to smooth people’s visit because we’re not going to have one big act on one big night of the four days. There are going to be biggish acts and attractions on every night,” he explains.

Next year, a Georgian festival will run in the Marina’s Maritime Experience over the four days with shows linked to the era of Jane Austen, and the town will be hosting a folksinging and sea shanty festival.

On the Saturday prior to the Tall Ships’ arrival, the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra and choir will be staging a concert in the Borough Hall with a seathemed programme.

Despite the promise of free street entertainment, music and, possibly, video screens, all who come will want to see a tall ship and so far, with over a year to go, 20 have already confirmed attendance.

But those looking to use the Marina’s car park, which can quite happily cope with around 5,000 visitors, are likely to require what Cashman describes as “park and ride or park and stride” areas being created.

Cashman feels it was the success of the Millennium Festival at Hartlepool which has led to Dockfest and the Tall Ships event being considered for the area.

“The Maritime Festival was invented by community services way before my time here and it’s been a year-on-year success. The fact that Hartlepool can deliver that suggested we could be a good partner for the Tall Ships. Now is a great time to be planning a festival because the Visit Team Valley tourism strategy is based on portraying the region as being somewhere that has lots going on. The boldness has come from Mayor Stuart Drummond and John Mennear, the assistant director of community services, who came up with the idea in the first place,” he explains.

Bringing the big entertainment names to Hartlepool has been made easier by the fact that the organisers could turn to Andy Kelly of Stockton’s Riverside Festival for help in booking The Lightning Seeds and Graham Ramsay of Middlesbrough’s Live Festival, who also organises most of the region’s big comedy nights, for Sean Lock.

“This autumn we’ll also be testing Graham’s Big Mouth Comedy Club at Hartlepool Theatre with a name that will have the same status as Sean Lock,” says Cashman.

ASKED about the level of free entertainment, he replies: “This is an interesting piece of history because the Maritime and Millennium festivals developed from the old Hartlepool Show where everyone brought along things like horticulture, cookery and artwork and that was all free. So the provision of things without charge has fed right through to tall ships, although people may have to pay to go onboard some of the tall ships according to the wish of the captains.”

Cashman’s proudest of creating “sea shanty samba” as part of the community cavalcade, which features drumming and Brazilian dance and sea shanty singing, that will launch Dockfest this weekend.

For once, you suspect Hartlepool is going to enjoy being all at sea.

■ Dockfest, Hartlepool Marina, Saturday-Sunday.

hartlepooldockfest09.com