About Swaledale Festival
Who we are, where we are and what we do
Swaledale Festival is a two week festival of music and arts based in the two most northerly of the Yorkshire Dales, Swaledale and Wensleydale, with occasional forays to just outside that area, such as Barnard Castle. It takes place in a range of venues of different sizes from tiny chapels seating about 50 people to the magnificent n
ew auction centre at Tennants of Leyburn that can seat over 700 people. Many of these venues are churches and chapels but the Festival also works with other organisations such as the Wensleydale Creamery at Hawes and the heritage site at Gayle Mill to stage events that combine the special talents of each. From the Saturday of the late May Spring Bank Holiday for the following two weeks you can find us in towns and villages from the ancient town of Richmond (the original one with that name) with its magnificent mediaeval church and fascinating Georgian theatre, to the tiny URC chapel in the remote hamlet of Keld at the very head of Swaledale. In Wensleydale our concert venues stretch from Bedale and occasionally Masham, home of one of our loyal supporters, Theakston’s brewery to the dale-head market town of Hawes, home of Wallace and Grommet’s favourite cheese. Our ability to range over such a wide area is thanks to another supporting company, Sherwoods of Darlington who generously provide the vehicles to make this possible. Swaledale Festival events range from its core classical music concert,s often bringing in world class artists, through other musical genres (jazz, folk, brass band ‘world’ etc.) to poetry, film, drama, puppetry and the frankly unusual such as ‘borrowing’ LNER A4 Pacific No. 4464 ‘Bittern’ for a day and running it on the Wensleydale Railway with musicians on board to entertain the passengers. In addition there is a series of walks, often themed and with an expert guide, that are always amongst the first events to sell out. Many years this includes the Walk with Musical Interludes. At other times of year, as well as during the Festival, the Community & Education group works with the Artistic Director to take high quality music and arts activities to places and people who are not able to attend concerts etc. These projects include concerts in care-homes and musical activities in schools for which the Festival has received several awards. These activities are always provided at no cost to the recipients and rely heavily on grants and donations from generous funding organisations.
