Brighton Festival opens this weekend and runs for most of May as the biggest event of its kind in England.

There have been problems in recent years because the Dome complex has been out of action through renovation.

But that has now been completed and the museum is reopening on Saturday too, giving Brighton the biggest cultural quarter in the South-East.

It is an ideal background for new chief executive Nick Dodds, who is putting on his first Brighton Festival.

There will be thrills and there will be failures. That's what adventurous programming is all about.

Mr Dodds is wise to build on the festival's undoubted strengths, such as dance, while creating the usual community events which the whole city can enjoy.

At the end of the month an exhausted Nick Dodds should be able to say it was fun and it enhanced Brighton and Hove's arts-based economy.