Just got back from (playing at) Handley Village Festival which was in its first year. Had an absolutely lovely time so thought I'd let mudcat people knew that this new festival has the makings of a really good one.

Lovely site - good facilities using a junior school in Chesterfield (Derbyshire) which coped well with the wet. Plenty of food, cd & other stalls. Lots of activities for kids. Plenty of helpful stewards. And the backstage support for artists was fantastic - free and very tasty food all weekend, yum.

Nice lineup (well, maybe I'm biased :) from

Salsa Celtica
Back of the Moon
The Doonan Family Band
Chris While & Julie Mathews
Crucible
Flossie Malavialle
Judy Dunlop & Jon Scaife
Kerfuffle
Kris Drever & Martin Green
Simon Mayor and Hilary James
Sid Kipper
Tom McConville Trio
Hannah James & James Molyneux
Jon Gomm
Roger Davies
Hazel and Emily Askew
John McGrory
4 Square

The organisers had apparently had severe hostility from locals (including an attempt at an injunction to stop the festival happening last Friday) due to various misguided beliefs that there would be 20,000 drunk and drugged up festival goers rampaging round the area & causing a crime spree (..... eh??!!). This led to the festival site moving from Handley Village itself at a fairly late stage. Despite what must have been a very stressful time they still managed to run a very nice (and small, and friendly, and by no means any cause for concern for locals!!) festival.

Only problem, shared I'm sure by many a festival in its first year, was that there were not as many people there as we'd all have liked. Maybe the publicity didn't get to the right places...? Maybe it just takes a while to build up an audience...?

Anyhow, I'd thoroughly recommend it for next year to anybody looking for a friendly new festival to try.

ta,
Jess

http://www.cruciblemusic.co.uk