Category Archives: event management

Flavour-packed festival a sunny success

A sunny September day saw Nelson Food and Drink Festival thronged with thousands of visitors flocking to the town centre on Saturday.

They were rewarded with a full day of foodie fun and the chance to sample a wide range of delicious treats at the fabulous free festival with a real multicultural flavour.

Mayor of Pendle Coun. Nawaz Ahmed, who officially opened the festival at 10am, stayed for the rest of the day, mingling with the crowds, enjoying the entertainment and talking to the stallholders in the Worldwide Food Market.

“I believe there were easily eight to nine thousand people here in Nelson today,” said a delighted Coun. Ahmed.

“I am really pleased to see the town so busy – at one point there were so many people in the food market I could hardly move. This has been a very different kind of event for Nelson and it has really brought the whole community together. I hope to see more events like this in the future.”

Centred on The Shuttle monument, the event began with Nelson town crier Tony Edwards welcoming everyone before handing over to the Mayor to officially open the festival with a ribbon cutting.

With more than 20 stalls selling everything from sausages to samosas and cupcakes to charcoal grilled chicken, the Worldwide Food Market was busy from the off, with stallholders reporting an excellent day’s trading and still busy as the festival drew to a close at 4pm.

Highlights of the day were live cookery demonstrations in the outdoor cookery theatre set up next to The Shuttle and filling its surrounding amphitheatre with people keen to pick up culinary tips from the experts. Central to these was entertaining celebrity chef Richard Fox, whose easygoing, down to earth and amiable style was a real hit with the Nelson crowds.

He performed three of the demonstrations himself and hosted two others given by local restaurant Spice of India and the festivals’ main sponsor, Nelson and Colne College. Its lecturer Mark Taft was joined by John Jones from the award-winning Seafood Pub Company and together they rustled up a full three-course gourmet menu in a fascinating and fast-paced presentation.

After each session the spectators were invited to sample the delicious dishes which had just been created. Richard Fox is also a great campaigner against food waste and was delighted to welcome Pendle’s own chef, writer and ‘food activist’ Gill Watson, who talked about her culinary career and her work locally to cut food waste and help people eat well whatever their budget.

A visual highlight was a colourful and energetic half-hour performance by the Punjabi Roots Dance Academy, whose programme fused traditional Indian dancing and music with modern pop rhythms and had a large crowd of spectators roaring its approval.

Free face painting and henna art were on offer in Nelson marketplace, with the colourful results evident all around the festival. Upstairs in the Pendle Rise shopping centre a ‘Cakelicious’ children’s cake decorating competition was kept busy all day. It was sponsored by another of the festival’s key supporters, Oddies family bakers, which supplied all the plain cupcakes and decorating materials, with students from Nelson and Colne College on hand to help.

Scores of visitors also arrived at the festival in style aboard a classic 1968 Leyland Titan double- decker bus. Supplied by Darwen Transport Trust, it ferried passengers for free, running on two routed from Burnley and Barnoldswick for most of the day.

As the festival drew to a close, chef Richard Fox commented: “What a great day! I’ve had a really friendly welcome from the people of Nelson and Pendle and what wonderful food we’ve seen cooked and on sale here today.

“It’s certainly helped to have such a lovely sunny day, but for me the things I’ll remember are the friendly folk and the fabulous food.”

For more information about the festival, including photos and video of the day’s events, visit its website at:www.nelsonfoodfestival.co.uk

‘Beer Chef’ to be toast of festival – 6th June 2015

Celebrity chef Richard Fox will be the guest star at the Accrington Food and Drink Festival on Saturday, June 6.

Richard, dubbed ‘The Beer Chef’, will front this year’s cookery stage on Accrington’s Broadway, with more than 4,000 people expected to attend the festival, which is free to enter.

A host of culinary delights, proudly produced by local farmers and independent traders, will be available for visitors to sample during the special one-day event.

And Richard, who wrote The Food and Beer Cook Book and starred in the ITV series Men Brewing Badly alongside Neil Morrissey, is set to be the star attraction as he demonstrates his cooking skills.

Mr Fox, who has a strong family affinity with Lancashire, specialises in turning leftovers into gastronomic masterpieces.

The Accrington Food and Drink Festival has a proud history of attracting TV cooking personalities with James Martin and Gizzi Erskine among those to have previously attended.

The event will also commemorate the 71st anniversary of the D-Day landings, while two historic buses will transport families from around the area for a small fee.

For more information about the festival, visit the official website

www.accringtonfoodfestival.co.uk or contact Kirsty at kirsty@scottdawson.co.uk or on 01282 426846.

Sweet plans for town’s annual food festival

Plans are well underway for this year’s Accrington Food Festival – and this year’s event looks set to be sweeter than ever.

Formerly known as Lancashire Food Festival, this year the newly rebranded Accrington Food and Drink Festival will be a one-day event designed to showcase the area’s best food and drink.

Supporting farmers and independent traders, the festival – now in its 18th year – will entice hungry crowds in with a host of culinary surprises, from freshly made pies and black puddings to healthy juices and colourful cakes.

This year, Hyndburn Leisure has appointed marketing company Scott Dawson Advertising to organise the annual food festival on a three-year contract to turn it into a sustainable event. Work already completed by SDA has included the design of a brand new logo to launch this year’s event.

Managing director Murray Dawson said: “We’re proud to be the driving force behind this year’s Accrington Food Festival – it’s going to be bigger and better than ever. We’ve worked hard for many years to win this contract and we’re giving it our all to make it a wonderful event for everyone.”

SDA hopes to unite all of the town’s independent retailers, bars, restaurants, cafes, pubs and street food specialists to make it a celebration of Accrington.

Kirsty Lauder, who works for Accrington Market Online through SDA and is helping to organise the festival said: “Here in Hyndburn we have a population of 87,000 and we’ve set out with big goals to attract more than 4,000 people to this year’s food festival.

“We know everything that’s great about Accrington and the wider area – there is just so much fantastic produce available so it’s our job to handpick the very best and show it off. We have an enormous passion for shopping local and hopefully it will be infectious!

Organisers say the decision to pack all of the activity into a single day, Saturday 6 June, rather than running the festival across an entire weekend was designed to make sure visitors, exhibitors and sponsors all get the most from the event.

Last year celebrated TV cook and Sunday Times magazine columnist Gizzi Erskine was the special guest at the food festival – watch her talking about Accrington here:

It’s not too late to get involved – limited spaces are still available for exhibitors and sponsors. Contact sue@scottdawson.co.uk, call 01282 426 846 or visit www.accringtonfoodfestival.co.uk for more information and follow @AccringtonFood on Twitter for the latest news.