Regional briefs best served by local teams

For a festival intended to showcase the best of what one of the UK's

greatest cities has to offer, it seems wrong to rely on a capital-based

agency to promote it. The North-West has a thriving PR scene and is

hardly short of agencies capable of getting national exposure for a

local initiative.

Regional development agencies are quick to bemoan the drain - both

cultural and economic - that London exerts on the rest of the UK,

especially the North.

The Manchester festival result is especially irritating as it implies

that regional decision-makers are perpetuating, rather than solving,

this problem.

I should point out that I bear The Idea Generation no ill will and wish

it every luck in promoting the festival, which promises to be an

exciting event. It just seems odd that the organisers felt that a London

agency was best capable of showing Manchester in its best light.

Maha Bishay, PR director, Native Instinct, Macclesfield.