Sneinton Community Festival is 20!

I didn’t mean to be organising Sneinton Community Festival 2024, but then I never really intended to live in Sneinton for so long and yet somehow the place, and the festival, have claimed me… and my little dog too! 

This year is a special one as the festival is officially forty years old, but it is probably a lot older - there are references to events in 1775 that happened ‘at the time of Sneinton Feast Day’ held on 4 August on Sneinton Common. "The village itself is rural, at present in some measure romantic; has a number of pleasant villas and cottages, and has long been famous for a race of dairy people, who make a very pleasant kind of soft summer cheese’ John Britton wrote several years later in The Beauties of England and Wales (1808).

Nowadays Sneinton is a little bit different, no less interesting - not as many dairy people perhaps. In the 1980s Sneinton still had its common (until it was built on in 1988), and that is where the annual festival was held - a May Day Festival with a traditional May queen picked from the local school children, it included a sports day, a pet dog show and I’m told that David Lloyd, the Trent FM DJ, was the compère - who is also the voice that tells you which is the next stop on NCT buses!

It turns out it is not that easy organising a community festival with a parade. From 1994 to 2008, D.A. Orli was involved in running the festival - initially as an arts festival. Every year the festival had a theme. ‘Planet Sneinton’ in 1998 gained funding from the East Midlands Star Trek Society. ‘Once upon a time in Sneinton’ in 2001 was supported by the Robin Hood Society. D.A.Orli sent me a fascinating account of these years. It strikes me how inventive they were.

Sneinton has become home to so many different kinds of people - many refugees, asylum seekers and diaspora - so this year’s theme ‘There’s no place like home’ is a celebratory reference to the multicultural population now living in the area.

Sneinton was home to a prisoner of war camp in World War II, after the war many of the Italian prisoners stayed in Sneinton and were joined by other Italians. Roma peoples suffer persecution in many parts of Europe and the UK, but have found Sneinton a tolerant home. I’m also told that Sneinton was ‘the gay village’ in the 1980s. Years on, these things are all worth celebrating, also to acknowledge the many homes and cultures that we have left behind. 

Moon Cavanagh from the SEND Project helped to run the festival through the 2010s. He recalls one of his favourite festival moments: “We had nearly 100 Sneintonites of all ages, shapes and sizes doing Kundalini yoga together. If you’ve never seen it, it’s more like a dance workout than yoga. Amazing.” David Jones, another organiser, gets a misty look in his eye when he talks about his first festival meeting. “Someone suggested that we turf the road and everyone agreed, and I thought, this is the community for me.” He also notes the importance of the community street parade: “For one day you are more important than the cars!”

The festival has in recent years fallen on hard times due to difficulties with bureaucracy, funding, the pandemic, and flying monkeys. Last year, David helped Green’s Windmill get funding from the lottery for paid employees to organise the festival and parade respectively, rebranding the festival as ‘Mill on the Hill Festival’ - which was very successful. But this year Green’s Mill have had to focus on renovating their 19th century windmill to make sure it continues to be a beautiful community hub in the area.

This year the festival is back to its community roots, scraping funding together from wherever we can. A community festival puts everyone into a different mindset - it is a common goal and, while it is problematic that so often artists are expected to work for free, the Sneinton community festival makes your talents worth more than just money. It is a clarion call for people to lend things, to exchange, to sing, perform, make art, dance, be a viking - for the joy of it - and for the sake of each other - to be seen and to see each other. 

The main carnival day will be Saturday, starting with a parade at 11am from Edale Road to Hermitage Square. At Hermitage Square there will be an international music and dance stage, and a health and wellbeing area. There will be a family fun day at St Stephen’s church yard, an exhibition and art competition at the Salvation Army, a viking camp at Lindum Grove Community Garden, pop-up coaching and football from Nottingham Forest Community Foundation, and retro gaming from It’s Much More.

Throughout the rest of the week; Mencap Makaton Choir will be performing at Stonebridge City Farm, there will be the Iona School Fayre, a garden party at Carlton Fold, events at the William Booth Museum, The Great Sneinton Bake Off, The International Food Evening at St Christopher’s Church Hall, a wildlife festival and a family picnic at Greens Mill. Something for everyone - and so much to get excited about.

We have been working on the festival since February and we are all tired! But I’m proud of our little team - and I don’t mind having been claimed by this festival and the curious dairy people in the jolly old land of Sneinton. 

If you would like to get involved with organising, performing, stewarding, litter picking, or dressing up, please contact coopersmarket@gmail.com. Help the festival carry on through the years by contributing to here.

www.sneintonfestival.org.uk