img_0566

Cheetham Hill cultural festival’s virtual celebrations

  • Cheetham's highly anticipated festival was hosted on Facebook Live
  • Local residents elated after finding out the celebrations would go ahead
  • Following social distancing, organisers were able to gather people from different communities to celebrate

The annual Cheetham Hill culture festival, took a different approach this year to celebrate and keep the life of the festivities going.

On Sunday things took a different turn for residents in Cheetham when the nieghbourhod hosted its highly-awaited culture festival.

For many residents from Cheetham Hill and neighbouring communities, they could not partake in the festival due to the COVID 19 outbreak and restrictions surrounding group gatherings.

Organisers, however, were able to find a solution and host the event on Facebook Live, displaying what they had prepared for this year’s culture festival to the audience wihch was able to experience the ambience of the festival from their home.

Cheetham Hill resident sound engineer at Buzzin Studios in Cheethamm Aaron Fletcher, said: “The last few months have been really tough and in April we didn’t think we’d even have anything this year.” 

Expressing his gratitude to the organisers of the event Fletcher said: “I felt so proud of the organisations for pulling together and making it special for the residents and those who love the area.

The community needed it, we needed it!”

Although lockdown restrictions are still in force, tresidents still found joy in attending the anticipated celebration though these unprecedented times.

“The festival being online definitely took away some of the feel and experience,” Aaron said.

“But the coming together to celebrate and learn was evident throughout the whole day.” 

The live stream received an outpouring of supportive commentary from viewers and was shared widely across social media platforms.

The Cheetham Hill Cultural Festival is one of the community’s highly awaited celebration for the month of September. It brings people and organisations together to get involved in the many activities they have to offer and includs music, food and dance.

Though this year, the event was virtual it still maintained the spirit of fun as it included musical performances, food stalls and plenty more. Residents are hopeful that next year the festival can go on as per usual.