THE economic slowdown is having an impact on culture in Guernsey as business support for cultural events threatens to dry up.

Michael Surcombe, the artistic director of the island’s Victor Hugo Music Festival, due to take place in July, has called the wider economic threat to the arts as ‘culture in crisis’.

He said that the biennial festival could be under threat for 2012 and beyond because of a shortage of corporate sponsorship.

‘We’re at a time when a lot of businesses are reassessing their priorities, both in their core business and peripheral activities because of the state of the economy,’ he said.