Thursday Meppel Day is again six days this summer. The evening festivals on all the squares in the city also return to the programme.
The event annually attracts about 10,000 visitors per day to the center of Meppel. With Mokum in Meppel, that goes towards 15,000 or more. Last year, the Thursday Meppel Days went back from six to four days, due to financial difficulties after the corona years. The festivities stopped at 9 p.m. because it was not possible to organize it.
Those problems are now largely over. The festival goes back to six days and continues into the wee hours, with music in the squares. “Our ambition was to go again for six days,” says Harrie Harskamp, the new chairman of Thursday Meppeldag. “But six days is expensive. So we made it five plus a day.”
Five plus one is six. But then again not. For five Thursdays, the festival is just as it was. In the morning and afternoon there is a program based on a theme. A flea market, street theater, food trucks, games or a pride, for example. And in the evening DJs and artists play on the stages in the squares. “What is new is that there is one mystery act on several evenings this year. We do not announce in advance who will perform. You will only hear and see that when you are there.”
Also new is that this year you can pay with coins in the evenings, this should shorten the lines for drinking.
The ‘plus one’ is the first day of Thursday Meppel Day, on 20 July. Then there is the procession of decorated wagons. “It heralds this year’s five different themes. It is the introduction.” There is no other theme in the city or party in the squares that day. In the evenings, the party continues in the cafes, where they hold a ‘pre-Mokum party’.
Harskamp speaks of a semi-corona edition. “We noticed that there was less financial support due to corona. There was also less catering in the city. Some cafes disappeared.” That made it difficult for us to keep the six traditional days in the air. And the organization was not insensitive to society either. “Meppel is crying out to go back to the traditional six days.”
It has not been easy at all, Harskamp admits. More and more time is being spent in the organization, which runs on volunteers. “I just work next to it and in the beginning I spent a lot of time a week for Thursday Meppel Day. You can’t keep that up.” This is not sustainable at all in the long term. “Find volunteers again when more and more is involved.”
He refers, among other things, to more stringent regulations, nitrogen calculations, waste policy that comes into play and everything related to safety. “Now this is my first year as chairman, so I lost some extra time with settling in and getting acquainted. But to keep future events going and to continue to find volunteers for them, a less time-consuming method must be found.”