20
Aug
Live music leads to increase in market day visitors to Ripon
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The number of market day visitors in Ripon has increased by 31% since live music was introduced, according to Ripon City Council.
The council began paying musicians to play in the city each Thursday this summer to boost footfall to the market and nearby retailers.
The city council said today (August 20) new figures provided by Ripon Business Improvement District showed visits had increased from 58,191 across four comparable dates in 2025 to 76,142 across the equivalent four Thursdays in 2026.
This represents an increase of 17,951, or 31%.
Average dwell time increased from 1 hour 7 minutes to 2 hours 30 minutes, a rise of 124%.
Overall daily footfall throughout the week grew by 14%.
The Market Day Melodies initiative takes place between 11am and 2pm each Thursday throughout July and August.
There is also free children’s facepainting in the cabman’s shelter on school holiday Thursdays.
Huq Industries Ltd captures footfall data for Ripon BID.
Councillor Andrew Williams, who suggested the musical initiative after seeing live music at Wetherby market, said:
We made this investment for a very clear reason: to give people another reason to choose Ripon on a Thursday, enjoy the market and then spend time exploring the shops, cafés and businesses around it.
These early results are genuinely encouraging. We cannot say that any one event explains every visit, but the results strongly suggest that creating a welcoming and lively atmosphere in the marketplace is helping Ripon’s traditional market day work harder for the whole city centre.
The British Retail Consortium reported that UK high-street footfall fell by 3.8% year on year during its July monitoring period.
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