LIKE thousands of other Blackburn residents, I attended many of the events that made up the Arts In The Park festival last weekend. It was a superb programme of attractions, ranging from local amateur groups to top class professionals -- there really was something for everyone.

It was obvious that a great deal of planning had gone into making the event such a success, one that really brought the community together.

On a day when highly paid football players were again involved in unseemly tussles, it was good to see that just a mile up the road from Ewood Park, Corporation Park was full of people enjoying themselves properly. While acknowledging that attractions were paid for out of "special" millennium grants, it is to be hoped that the council will consider making Arts In The Park an annual event.

At the beginning of the year Coun Malcolm Doherty promised the event would be the biggest and best celebration ever seen in East Lancashire. Last weekend proved what an able prophet he is.

Praise is due to Coun Ashley Whalley and to Carl Hutton, the millennium co-ordinator -- one for convincing colleagues to run the event in the first place and the other for breathing life into the ideas proposed by the council.

A few days ago I visited the dome in Greenwich. It spoke very little to me about Blackburn or indeed any thing much in particular. Irrelevant, is the word that springs most readily to mind. Last weekend was quite the reverse.

And whoever arranged for the weather to stay fine for three days running, despite forecasts to the contrary, deserves a pat on the back too.

PAUL MASON, Crosshill Road, Blackburn.