Headlining from your front garden
The festival season is back with a twist
After two years of widespread cancellations, this year’s festival season is back in full swing. Its return is testament to the resilience and perseverance of creativity and culture, supported throughout the Covid-19 pandemic by the government’s landmark Culture Recovery Fund.
Once again, audiences are coming together to celebrate creative talent across the country. The allure of a packed programme of weekend-long events remains as strong as ever, and it’s a joy to see people enjoying them again in their thousands.
The expense of attending a festival though can sometimes be prohibitive. With the cost of living increasing, it's more important than ever that we continue to have free and accessible ways to experience music festivals.
Local festivals offer just that - a way to take part right on our doorsteps. Curated by communities, organisations and artists from the local area, free and inclusive events are springing up around the country, providing people an opportunity to engage with creativity and culture across our villages, towns and cities.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of Creative People and Places, a fund which focuses on parts of the country where involvement in creativity and culture is significantly below the national average.
One area to benefit is Sedgemoor in south west England, which, thanks to this investment, is now to home to the Front Garden Music Festival.
Front Garden Music Festival
This June, Seed Sedgemoor presented the second annual Front Garden Music Festival, which saw over 4,500 people come out and enjoy more than 60 musicians performing as solo acts, duos, bands, string quartets and choirs.
Staged throughout several towns across the Somerset levels and moors, in private gardens, parks and pub gardens, through to playing fields and National Trust gardens, local creative people were given a platform to showcase their talents, alongside acts that travelled to perform at the events.
People across Sedgemoor, eager to see some live music, had the opportunity to come and experience it, right on their doorsteps.
Supported by Creative and People and Places, the festival fell on the tenth anniversary of the funding programme. A programme that, since 2012, has developed grassroots, community-led cultural programmes that people want and need.
We meet some of the people who have made it happen in Sedgemoor.
"Getting the band back together" with Beat Route
Roger Rogers, local resident and drummer of local band Beat Route who formed in the mid 1960’s.
‘Four of us started the band back in the mid-sixties and I thought, well I’ll get the old band back together. We missed out on last year’s festival, but this year, when I saw it, I thought, that would be brilliant. It’s been brilliant and we got a beautiful day.
'In 1969 ‘Beat Route’ played a gig at Street Youth club, and when we finished the DJ announced, ‘Someone has just asked me; “Beetroot... where did you dig them up from?”. We then decided it was time to change our band name to The Weight.
'We lasted for about three years. In 1991, three of us got back together to do a one-off gig which lasted for 18 years. Then in 2019 I managed to get the old original “Beat Route” back together, and as they say, the rest is history.’
Val's Story
Val Bannister, Bridgewater resident and musician, performed from her front room to audiences gathered in her garden.
'I’m very keen on the idea of having live music, whether it’s classical, popular, folk, anything, live music is so much better than recorded. I was asked last year if I would do something and that was the first year they were doing something, and I thought, why not? They said would I do something again this year and I thought yeah that was fun. I’ve lived in many parts of the country, I moved down to Somerset 20 years ago when I retired, I was in a cottage in the nearby village. Its satisfying to be able to do something to give people a bit of a laugh.'
Seed Sedgemoor
A Creative People and Places outlook
Seed Sedgemoor is the most recent of 39 projects across the country supported by Creative People and Places.
It aims to demystify and grow creativity in Sedgemoor, with the strong belief that local people, and what is important to them, truly matters, and that this should be the basis for future investment.
Seed Sedgemoor brings together community groups and local organisations including Homes in Sedgemoor, Community Council for Somerset (CCS), Bridgewater Senior Citizens’ Form, Young Somerset, Somerset Film and Bridgewater Town Council.
Together, they will put on a programme of activities and provide opportunities for everyone in Sedgemoor to enjoy creativity and culture, with a focus on reaching and including those who don’t often engage with the arts.
Creative People and Places
10 years on
Creative People and Places provides funding to transform access to creativity and culture in places where engagement is significantly below the national average. Find out more about each project and the funding it has received.
From 1 April 2022, a total of 39 Creative People and Places projects, 11 of which are brand new, officially joined the Arts Council’s National Portfolio. From 2022 to 2025, we’ll invest £38.3million in the 56 local authority areas now covered by Creative People and Places. This brings the total investment to £108 million since inception of the programme in 2012, all made possible thanks to National Lottery Players.
Since 2012, there have been over 8 million people engaging with Creative People and Place projects, which have brought together community, grassroots, and cultural organisations as partners to take the lead in choosing, creating, and taking part in creative and cultural activities that their local communities want and need.
Built with Shorthand