
ANOTHER Frome Festival has passed, and what a festival it was! With record breaking ticket sales, world class acts and an array of shows, workshops and events, the festival cemented its place as the best small town festival in the country.
The build up to this year’s festival, now in its 15th year, was the biggest ever with a huge demand for tickets and many shows, workshops, walks and talks selling out within days of going on sale.
Mayor of Frome, cllr Toby Eliot said, “This fantastic community festival is a triumph of organisation – my congratulations to everyone involved. Of course I’d expect nothing less from our amazingly creative town.”
Reflecting on this year’s festival, Martin Dimery, the Festival’s creative director, was full of praise for all those who made 2016 a year to remember.
“The feedback has been extremely good and we have received a lot of ‘thank yous’ and compliments. This year, there seemed to be a huge sense of celebration in the town, more so than in other years which I think is because of the increase in the amount of people taking part in this year’s festival and more people playing an active role.
“The ticket sales this year will probably be recording-breaking. We expect to have raised around £70,000 which is incredible as the average is usually around £50,000. We did have a few events which were more expensive this year, but the volume of tickets sold was still up from other years. We are very pleased because it gives us stability and enables us to start planning next year’s event straight away. There have been years when we didn’t know whether or not we would be able to fund the next festival, but the success of this year’s puts us in a solid position to support future festivals.
“This is largely down to the festival being organised with a lot of volunteer support and minimal staffing. As the years go on, we deal with the pressures of the festival in a more routine way and we know what pressure points to look out for and each year we learn from previous festivals.
“There were many festival highlights but for me, to have world class acts such as Tamsin Waley Cohen and Pee Wee Ellis and the Funka-Nova Quartet to finish the festival was incredible. Also to have sell-out audiences for Dr Phil Hammond and Reef simultaneously, plus having the same support for the smaller but still high quality events going on at the same time is brilliant.
“The participation for this year’s events was amazing. So many local people put on superb workshops, talks, plays and productions and they equally drew large crowds.
“Thank you also to the Frome Times team for their continued support and coverage. There is an enormous amount of talent in Frome and the festival is the perfect place to showcase it and so your support with promoting the festival is very much appreciated by all those involved.”