St Neots Festival has been voted by the public as the Best Cambridgeshire Festival 2023 and was runner up for Best East Anglian Festival. This was the first ever St Neots Festival and was a free two-day event with 650 performers and over 12,000 attendees put on by Neotists CIC and an army of dedicated volunteers.
There were 5 awards up for grabs – one for each county and the overall East Anglian Festival of the Year with over 750 Events, Festivals, Fairs and Fun Days to choose from!
There were 5,000 votes from 8,500 visits to the surveys and 40 per cent of the events were voted for! The results were announced on BBC local radio stations on Friday.
Ann Hawkins is a director of the Neotists, a community interest company behind the St Neots Festival.
“This is a great example of what can be achieved by local people working together,” she said.
But Ann believes there are two people in particular worthy of special mention and credit.
“The festival was conceived, designed, and run by a group of volunteers, led by Clair and Richard Slade – two people who never seek the spotlight and prefer to fly under the radar,” she said.
“They engaged with local community groups in St Neots, hundreds of volunteers and local businesses and produced this amazing event that brought together over 12,000 people, free of charge, over two days.”
She added: “A lot of local people have no idea who Clair and Richard are or what the Neotists CIC is but the people who *do* know them, trust, and respect them to the extent that they all got behind the idea and supported it, and they were able to make it happen – and are planning to do it all again this year!
“It’s fantastic to see all the hard work Clair and Richard put in recognised in this award and they will be the first to say it was all down to the efforts of other people, but those of us who know them know that without them it just wouldn’t have happened.”
https://stneotsfestival.co.uk/
BACKGROUND
St Neots Festival is a new performing arts festival in the beautiful setting of Priory Park, St Neots.
Organised by arts collective Neotists and volunteers it created a first event with over 140 bands, artists, dance and theatre groups, creative workshops, kids’ entertainers, wellbeing activities, community stalls and food and drink stalls.
1,000 people were actively involved including the long-awaited return of the St Neots Festival Parade.
Its aim, says the Neotists, is to make St Neots to be known across Cambridgeshire and beyond as a destination for cultural experiences.
TOP 10 FESTIVALS
Here are the top ten East Anglian Festivals (including the four award winners) voted for in 2023:
- Anti Loo Roll Festival (Essex and overall East Anglian Festival of the Year 2023)
- St Neots Festival (Cambridgeshire Festival of the Year 2023)
- Secret Island Festival
- Buckfest Music Festival
- Weird and Wonderful Wood(Suffolk Festival of the Year 2023)
- Frisking the Whiskers
- Yarmageddon – Legends Of Rock(Norfolk Festival of the Year 2023)
8.= Bring the House Down Fiestaval
8.= Thaxted Festival
- Southend Jazz Festival
