The Pendle Festival of Culture for 2019 was held in Nelson Town Centre on Sat 22nd June and proved to be very popular. The event was organised by Building Bridges Pendle, a non-profit organisation.
It offered an excellent mix of activities from a Peace Walk, music entertainment from local schools & bands, lots arts & crafts, a fun fair, food stalls, drinks stalls, ice cream, fun fair activities – including a huge bouncy castle! Plus many other activities which served to engage all parts of the community.
Nelson Town Centre
On arriving in Nelson, we headed over to the area where the festival stage was … where the shuttle statue is. En route, we grabbed a quick picture of Nelson Town Centre looking towards St Mary’s Church.
Police Cadets from Brierfied & Burnley were already sat in the seating along with many local people. Everyone was waiting for the ‘Peace Walk’ procession to arrive. The procession was walking from Colne to Nelson with the aim of promoting peace & closer community relations.
The Nelson Cadets were part of this walk and arrived first, closely followed by the Keep the Beat drum band …
Entertainment on the stage
Once the members of the walk had arrived, the Mayor of Pendle opened the festival with a short speech. He kept referring to the food and we’ll see later that he really was looking forward to it. (Man of my own heart!)
The first performances were by children from Marsden Primary School. They were accompanied by their deputy Headteacher, Julie Charlesworth, who was clearly very proud of them all. After the performance, the organisers of the event gave them all some free tickets for rides on the funfair. That was a rather nice touch.
The ‘Keep the Beat’ drum band not only took part in the walk from Colne to Nelson, but featured in the event itself and provided much entertainment. Many of the local community – adults & children joined in. They really loved the opportunity for some hands-on activities.
Art Zone: Henna, Face Painting, Arts & Crafts, Story Telling
Stalls offering henna painting, face painting, multiple types of arts & crafts and some story telling. Again, nice to see so many smiling faces and so much to engage children. Clearly, families were loving it.
Funfair Rides
LJS Funfairs was the company that provided the funfair rides. We chatted to the owner for a while, whilst trying to work out if there was a location in which we could get the whole of the fair into one photo … but there wasn’t. The rides were popular with the kids and the bouncy castle was huge! If only we didn’t have the camera’s with us …
“Talkaoke” was an interesting idea. Dubbed as ‘the community talk show’ where participants lead a shared conversation. Intended to be quite light-hearted, but with some serious objectives … tackling loneliness, fear etc. It certainly got people together of all ages & from all parts of the community together – just talking.
Only managed to get a pictures of a few stalls (the girls from the Barisartoo drinks van) and a local business selling samosa’s, kebabs and other eastern style foods. We ate a couple of samosa’s from them and they were very good … courtesy of the Trish (the Mayor’s assistant). That would be the second time she’s bought us food … the last time was a hot dog from the Summer Gala at the Pavillion Cafe in Colne. Thank you!
(There were other stalls which included more food stalls, soft/iced drinks, ice creams and sweets).
Some photo’s from whilst we were wandering around. As you can see, everyone was more than happy to get involved.
The first photo is actually of members of the music group YesAnd, who were waiting to perform. If you want to know more about them, you’ll need to head over to the Insitu Pendle Facebook page.
The last photo is Trish Judson (Mayor’s assistant), who is clearly helping our Mayor relieve the food stalls of any food! You cannot escape us Trish! Although it might normally be completely missed, it’s not uncommon to see them quietly supporting local events and business.
Building Bridges Pendle is an interfaith organisation and a registered charity which wants to bring a realisation that diversity, is a positive aspect in the make-up of our society. People must view differences in Culture and Faith as richness and be aware of commonalities in our identity as citizens of a multi-cultural and multi-faith country.
They’ve won a few awards because of their work in the community: Social Inclusion Award for “an outstanding contribution to social cohesion in Pendle” and a National Volunteers Award was given to Susan Whitehead (who has been a volunteer with Building Bridges since June 2002).
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