About 70 festivals are to be held across Oxford and Oxfordshire

The county and city councils are providing the cash for a year of festivals and special events in 2007.

Event organisers Oxford Inspires - the team behind the city's failed bid for Capital of Culture status - say they will spend �100,000 on publicity alone.

Seventy festivals are planned and the 50th anniversary of Oxford's Blackbird Leys estate will also be marked.

'Not a large amount'

The county and city councils are each giving �200,000 over the two-year period 2006 to 2008 and corporate and lottery funding is also being sought.

Oxford Inspires, which says its research shows the county was established in 1007, said �100,000 was not a lot to spend on marketing such an event.

Spokeswoman Catherine Nightingale said the money would be spent on listings guides, a website and promoting events run by smaller groups that would not otherwise be able to market themselves.

She told the BBC News website: "It's not a large amount when you think about how much somewhere like Liverpool is spending on its capital of culture events. That's millions.

County 'a late-comer'

"Actually this will not go very far."

Malcolm Graham, head of the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies, had put forward 1007 as the rough date for the founding of Oxfordshire.

He said: "Oxfordshire was a late-comer among English counties, established around 1007 in the borderland between Wessex, Mercia and the Danish-settled areas to the north and east."

Oxford Inspires is the cultural development agency for Oxford and Oxfordshire, backed by the councils, the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University and Arts Council England South East.