Exciting plans coming together for Stowmarket Festival

A wide range of community events and activities are planned to take place in Stowmarket at the start of June, many of them free or heavily subsidised, as part of this year's Stowmarket Festival. Launched in 2010, Stowmarket Festival has quickly developed a reputation as a diverse festival featuring everything from skateboarding to art exhibitions. This year's festival is benefiting from the fact that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is taking place in the middle of it which means that even more free community events will be taking place.

An early highlight of the festival this year will be the free blues festival, "StowBlues" at the Museum of East Anglian Life on Saturday 2nd June. The launch of StowBlues in 2011 was so popular that the real-ale bar ran dry by 7pm! Over 1,000 people attended the event and, with the promise of a sufficiently stocked bar at StowBlues 2012, the hope is that even more will attend this time round.

On Sunday 3rd June, the Cedars Park development in the town is set to host its first ever big community event. "Family Fun and Fitness" is being organised by volunteers from Cedars Park CIC as part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations and will feature all sorts of entertainment and activities showcasing local talent. On Monday 4th June, Jubilee 2012, a large-scale community festival featuring live music, stalls and entertainment, organised by Stowmarket residents, is taking place at Stowmarket Recreation Ground.

Other events during the festival include two arts exhibitions, a children's 5-a-side football tournament, a theatre workshop at the John Peel Centre for Creative Arts, the Stowmarket Parkour Jam, drum workshops, StowSports (a day of sporting activities for children) and the free two-day music festival, StowFest. Festival Co-ordinator, Daniel Harvey, said: "I don't think so many community events have taken place in Stowmarket in such a short space of time before! The timing of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is ideal as people are keen to organise events to celebrate that. I hope that one or two of those become regular fixtures in the Stowmarket Festival calendar."

One challenge for the festival organisers is making sure that people know what is going on. Daniel said, "We will be producing marketing literature promoting the festival which will be distributed throughout the town, but we're keen for more people to sign up to our free email list or to 'like' us on Facebook! That way we can give people regular updates so they know what's happening."

You can sign up to the Stowmarket Festival email list by filling in the simple form on the home page at www.stowmarketfestival.co.uk or, you can visit the Stowmarket Festival page on Facebook and click "like" to receive regular updates.