Plans Underway for Longsight Festival in time for Summer
- Planning has commenced for the Longsight festival
- The festival will be hosted in August of this year and will take place in Crowcroft Park
- Various groups will come together to celebrate Longsight and its residents
Planning has commenced for the Longsight festival, which aims to bring groups of the community together for a summer celebration.
The festival will be hosted in August of this year and will take place in Crowcroft Park in the centre of Longsight.
Community
Longsight Community Art Space is being used as a community meeting space for ideas for the festival.
Suzanne Richards, councillor for the ward of Longsight knows the importance of Art Space for community interest projects.
Suzanne said: “We’re meeting monthly at the moment to decide who’s going to do what.
“When they did the building up, and we fitted the shops, they went out to the community and asked the community, what would you like to see in these spaces?
“As a result, we’ve got the art space and we’ve got a Youth Project, which has been quite transformative for that bit of Longsight, because otherwise it would have been probably another takeaway.
“It’s funny because you don’t realise until these things open in the community, but we’ve got several artists that live in Longsight.
“It’s been really great for them to have that kind of organisation and outlet right in the community for them to kind of showcase their skills and their arts”.
Suzanne emphasised the importance of the festival being curated by people in the area.
“They don’t want it to be them organising it, they want it to be the whole community” she said.
Resident of Longsight and director of SNUG in Longsight, Claire Biggs, has also been heavily involved in the organisation of the festival this year.
Claire said: “The festival is due to be on the 17th August but we are still in the early planning stages.
“Longsight Community Art Space are holding the space for the community groups to come in and do different sections of the festival.
Showcase of local groups
“It will be a good showcase for all the local Longsight community groups to showcase what they do but also for the whole community to come together as a celebration of the cultures in the area and everything that is Longsight”.
Claire hopes that the local library, as well as schools will get involved with the festival, as well as the police and the fire brigade.
“The local councillors and the council neighbourhood team are all behind it.
Big festival day
“The aim would be to have this big festival day, with activities run by all the different groups”.
There were plans to hold a Longsight festival last summer but this was halted due to lack of preparation.
Claire said: “Last year the friends of Crowcroft Park were meant to be heading it, but it got to the point where it was very close and nothing had been planned.
“If this goes well, we will try and do the same thing next year”.