The festival, dubbed Applaud, runs this year from 17 July to 3 August and features more than 60 artists and shows - music, dance, theatre, visual arts, readers and writers and a range of talent at the TV ONE Pavilion on the grassy mound in Victoria Square.

The free festival programme is available in many places around the city. It explains how to book and includes a three-page planner for those attempting a real assault on the 18-day event.

The Arts Festival runs every two years. This, the fifth festival, is the second to be directed by Mr Boyce.

"We did a lot of new things in 2001, things like the Pavilion in Victoria Square and a number of new events," he says. "I think this one's more a matter of consolidating the best of that. The Pavilion's back with TV ONE as sponsor, but with a fuller programme this time. It was very popular last time, and quite often we had people sitting in just listening to a sound check, so this time we've tried to make sure there's something on all the time."

"There's the Art for Lunch series running from just after midday on weekdays and Weekends in the City with some of the highlights from the dance and theatre programmes."

"On the 23rd Christchurch City Libraries is sponsoring the Literature for Lunch event there and that'll have some of the cream of New Zealand writers reading from their work."

"In the early evenings, at 6pm, there's a great range of music on over the course of the festival and the main bill evening shows start at 8.15pm,- Mr Boyce says. "Then, from about 10.30 at night there'll be DJs from RDU showing their stuff and entertaining."

The programme's dance line-up has a hot Argentinian tango show called Estampas Portenas, the Royal NZ Ballet dancing Romeo and Juliet and the Southern Ballet Theatre's White. The nine theatre offerings include The Daylight Atheist, a Tom Scott play based on his father, and The Book of Fame, a play based on the book by Lloyd Jones about the 1905 Originals rugby union tour of Britain.

The music line-up is impressive. It includes the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra pairing with the Christchurch City Choir on Verdi's Requiem, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, two cathedral choirs and a New Zealand-first performance of Missa Gaia (Earth Mass), at the Town Hall on 2 August.