Bradford International Festival bosses have hit back after an open letter criticising this year's event was circulated at a peace conference in the city.

Robin Morley, the festival producer, said the action by former directors of the Bradford Festival to circulate the letter at the peace event to commemorate the riots, was done to maximise the damage to Bradford.

The letter, entitled Oh Ye of Little Faith, criticises many aspects of this year's event. Dusty Rhodes and Allan Brack say in the four page document: "We find it rich, to say the least, that the Council should exhort the people of Bradford to have faith in their vision, when they so clearly show such little faith themselves in the people who live and work in this city."

The letter continues: "The Bradford Festival (1987 to 2001) rightly gained an international reputation as Britain's pre- eminent community arts festival."

But of the latest festival they said: "This consortium, which is currently seeking to add even more towns and cities to its growing production list of 'wheel it in- and wheel it out' events, represents the very antithesis of what Bradford used to proudly boast."

It criticises the approach, length and timing, programming, attendance figures, Mela and marketing of the event. Today, Mr Morley defended the festival.

"This is an anti-Bradford statement and being spread at a time when there is a lot of sensitivity due to the anniversary of the riots. The people who will most suffer from this are the people of Bradford and it is undoing all the hard work to make Bradford the capital of Culture."

He added: "All successful organisations regularly change their artistic directors and that is the nature of the arts."

Mr Morley defended the various aspects of this year's festival saying he was proud to have included the Secret Bradford Project, Sticky and the Trails of the Unexpected. Many regular visitors to the Mela had said this year's was the best ever with women saying they felt particularly safe.

"We are very receptive to constructive criticism. People should be in no doubt about our desire to work with communities and we welcome any feedback and ideas and comments for nest year's festival. We accept that there were things that we could improve and we want to hear from the people of Bradford."

The new management team has the contract to produce Festivals in 2003 and 2004 but the contract is reviewed each year.

Councillor Andy Mudd, chairman of the regeneration and culture overview and scrutiny committee, said: "We will be doing a post-mortem at our meeting in the autumn. I went to the launch event, Sticky, which was excellent and it's a shame it went downhill after that.

"The Mela had problems with attendance and there was nothing for kids, this year the festival didn't work very well with schools which is a problem we are going to look at. We should learn from this year's festival."

Anyone with ideas or comments is asked to e-mail info@bethere2002.com.