Kirkstall Festival
Kirkstall Festival 2012! Fun and Music at this Years Festival
This year’s festival was, once again, a resounding success. From the volunteer support to the wonderful acts and bands, our 32nd annual Festival provided our thriving local community with a well-deserved celebration and something fun to participate in. The Festival is probably the largest community festival in Leeds run entirely by volunteers and this year attracted around 16,000 people. It is not a Rock Festival, or a county show, but an event that aims to entertain people of all ages and encourage them to become more involved members of the community. The Festival receives a small proportion of its funding from Council grants, but it is mainly self-financing, raising
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money from the stalls, food franchises, fairground and programme sales. If you bought a programme on your way in, thank you, this goes a long way to helping with the cost and £2 isn’t much for a day of entertainment. One of the main features of the event was the Birds of Prey Display, who once again awed with their original flying falconry display. They concentrate on the natural behaviour of their range of magnificent birds, and showed them doing what they do best - flying free. We saw some amazing birds such as: Hawks, Eagles and Vultures. At the top of the event site, visitors were drawn to the magnificent “merchants of musical mayhem” Bassa Bassa. A far cry from your usual brass band, their music
has strong jazz foundations blended with blasts of ska, latin, african, and funk - played with a colourful and energetic stage presence. Once again, this year we had the greatly anticipated Hope & Social who have been dubbed by The Independent as “One of the UK’s top five live bands” and their music described by Q Magazine as “A big sound from this impressive outfit... inspired, anthemic, great”. In a new addition to the line-up, on the youth sage, we were excited to present Leeds Young Authors. These performers are the result of an organisation that runs creative writing projects to nurture and develop youth talent and to encourage social inclusivity.