Friendship Festival fosters spirit of collaboration

The festival, now in its third year, has grown from a single venue to nine locations across the town .

The annual event took place on Bank Holiday Monday, May 5 and featured dozens of local organisations and interest groups making themselves known to anyone seeking a pastime, friendships and a wider social network.

Founder, Amanda Watts said: “This is the first time we have done it across the town having got so big that our one single venue at the Priory Hotel was bursting at the seams, so this is much better.”

She added: “It went really well. Some of the venues were absolutely heaving with people, which was wonderful and we will certainly do it again next year.”

She also hopes to bring on board volunteers to assist her in organising it.

Amanda said some people just popped to a couple of venues to find out things they were particularly interested in and stayed to watch the entire programme at certain venues, such as at St James’ Church, which had entertainment every half hour.

She said the museum had never been so busy, as was Hamond House art gallery.

Several shops and restaurants opened on the strength of the event too.

Amanda said she would like to see even more of the town involved: “I saw a lot of collaboration between groups and some are saying they are going to do things together in future.”