EXETER RESPECT

Hear The Respect Show every Saturday morning on Phonic FM

Exeter Respect is the city’s annual celebration of diversity established in 1997 as one way of fighting racism and promoting multi-cultural understanding after the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The Future Sound of Exeter was briefly involved with Exeter Respect in 2000 when it was asked to organise an ambient world stage featuring three diverse live acts and three world music DJs. Three years later in 2003 FSOE hosted the first version of the festival to take place at Exeter Phoenix, combining an evening show headlined by Transglobal Underground with free daytime community activities throughout the arts centre. This proved to be a winning formula for the core of the festival, to which other elements were then added at other venues over the next few years. By 2005 Exeter Respect had become a week-long festival including visual art, dance, film, spoken word, poetry and all sorts of workshop and discussion opportunities, culminating in a ‘respect Weekender’ at Exeter Phoenix with FSOE hosting an annual world music extravaganza on the Saturday night. Headliners for that event have been Transglobal Underground, the Asian Dub Foundation, Talvin Singh, Misty in Roots, and African Headcharge with Adrian Sherwood.

By 2008 the Exeter Respect weekend was so successful we simply could not fit all the community groups wanting to participate into the space available at Exeter Phoenix. In response to this, Exeter City Council offered use of Belmont Park for a day, along with suitable support in-kind for a big outdoor event. We combined the best elements of Exeter Respect into one: the quality programming from our ticketed events; the stalls, displays, workshops, food and campaigns from our Family Fun Day and all the activities from our Playday – ‘Respect In The Park’ was born!

Such was the success of the one-day Respect In The Park event in 2009 that we took the plunge and extended the event to a two-day free festival in 2010. We had we established a winning formula for our annual celebration of diversity and our 2011 event exceeded even our wildest expectations. A phenomenal 12,000 people visited Belmont Park on the Saturday followed by another 8,500 people on the Sunday – and feedback from all quarters, some of which has been quoted throughout this report, has been nothing short of incredible. The 2012 and 2013 events saw over 20,000 people passing through the park on those weekends and in 2021 Paul Giblin was nominated as an Olympic torchbearer by Exeter City Council as a thank you from the city.