Community support at the heart of Frome Festival success

THE ever-popular Frome Festival proved to be a fantastic success once again as thousands of people descended on the town for the ten-day celebration of music, culture and arts.

Around 12,000 people attended the various ticketed and free events in and around the town that celebrated the very best of what Frome has to offer and Frome Festival director, Adam Laughton, says that the event couldn’t have been a success without the continued support from the local community.

“A massive thank you to everyone that made this year’s festival a reality!” he said. “A thank you especially to all the independent events and the amazing venues which opened their doors to host as this festival would not be a success without this engagement and thank you to everyone that came to events over the ten days and took part in celebrating the town we live in and the creative people that live here.”

There were over 200 events in total taking place over the ten days – from headliners such as Miles Jupp and Asian Dub Foundation, to classic Frome Festival events such as the popular hidden gardens and the Festival Food Feast. New to this year was the Ring Out – a project that explored Frome’s churches and their bells.

Adam says the focus this year was providing festival events that everyone could enjoy – especially in light of the rising cost-of-living. He said, “There was something for everyone as we really wanted to provide a full programme of events that people could get involved with either for free or for a small price as we know everyone is feeling the cost-of-living at the moment.

“The accessibility at this year’s festival was one of our focusses as we received grant funding from the National Lottery that allowed us to put on so many free and low-cost events and actually, there were more free events this year than ever before. The free events were always at the heart of this year’s festival, and it was so lovely to see so many people attend these. It looks like we will have around 12,000 engagements with this year’s festival, which includes the free events and also the ticketed ones.”

This is Adam’s first year as Frome Festival director having taken over the reins from Martin Dimery. Speaking on his first year as director Adam said, “It was an absolutely joy to help organise the festival this year. We succeed when everyone else succeeds – all the organisers who put on independent events work so hard to promote their activities and our job is to be facilitators for this.

“We can help promote and fund things and we put on our own activities as well but the real joy is helping make this fantastic community of artists and event organisers shine and bring the festival to life and make it what it is – a celebration of Frome’s community. The local support is so important to the festival – we are a small organisation that punches far above its weight as we harness the power of the truly unique arts community that exists in the town and simply shine a spotlight on what Frome has to offer.

Support of the local community

“The Frome Festival can only be as good as the community that exists alongside us and that community needs support all year round. A key message from us is if you came to events or venues for the first time, please do support these venues and artists throughout the year so they can continue to make ends meet and so we can continue to shout about them at the festival.

“Personal highlights for me include the Bob Morris lecture, an annual staple of the Frome Festival that is named after one of the main chairmen of the festival Bob Morris. They had the fantastic historian William Dalrymple on the night who gave an interesting talk about the East Indian Trading Company. There was some amazing music going on including Raghu Dixit who is an incredible Indian artist that floats between folk, rock and even some electronic themes in his music.

“One of the more gratifying parts of the festival happened on the Friday night when all the pub gigs were taking place. There was a free Bach choral concert in Christchurch and I walked up from the pub with a load of other people who came up to watch with me and after this we all went back to the pub which says to me there is an audience that is looking to try new things at this festival and engaging with as many things as possible which was lovely.”

Adam also thanked Frome Town Council, the National Lottery Community Fund, the Frome Community Lottery and the Shape Mendip Lottery who provided vital funds to make the festival a reality.