The first Coastival took place in Scarborough on Friday 13th, Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th February 2009.

It was organised by Create Arts Development Ltd along with various partner organisations and comprised of 96 events in 30 venues over the 3 days.

There were a total of 9024 event attendances with the Feeder gig, Acoustic Lounge and Jazz Day events and the Lantern Parade being especially popular in both attendees and audience feedback. Audiences were asked to score the festival out of 10. The most common score was 9 out of 10, with 84.7% of the respondents scoring the festival an 8 or above.

51.22% of tickets were bought by people from outside of Scarborough. The audience survey found that of those visiting from out of town, 92% came especially for Coastival. On average, 3 days were spent in Scarborough by those visiting the town for Coastival. The average number of miles travelled to get to Coastival was 106 miles by those not resident in Scarborough.

Economic Impact - The Direct Economic Impact (that is actual money spent) was £235,085 for the UK economy as a whole and £175,231 for the Scarborough local economy. The Induced Economic Impact (that is the continuing effect of the actual money spent through the economy) was £513,725 for the UK economy as a whole and £364,688 for the Scarborough local economy.

Local artists played in important role in the festival - of those artists responding to the survey, 100% agreed that Coastival had provided useful opportunities, 83% agreed that Coastival had helped to raise their profile as an artist and 33% agreed Coastival had offered support in developing their practice. Of those arts/cultural organisations responding to the survey, 86% agreed that Coastival had provided useful opportunities; 86% agreed that Coastival had helped to raise their profile and 43% agreed Coastival had helped in developing skills.

One of the aims of Coastival was to increase local residents’ access to high quality arts activities and work with community organisations. Ten lantern-making workshops were held with a total of 300 local children in 8 primary schools, 1 nursery school and 1 public open session in Scarborough Library and Information Centre.

A further objective of Coastival was to work with those hard to reach groups and communities which would not usually access the arts. This was achieved, as four of the schools are in areas with social inclusion issues; three of the schools are in areas that fall in the top 10% of deprived wards in the UK. The Lantern Parade was well attended with approximately 400 children and adults taking part.