Sid Fest was a four day community festival that took place in Sidney Park Cleethorpes on the August Bank Holiday weekend 2016 featuring a fun fair, live music stage, and a broad range of activities and side stalls. All sponsored heavily by Big Local
When? August Bank Holiday weekend 2016
Partners: Many volunteers. Friends of Sidney Park. Sidney Park Boat Club. VANEL. NPSS. NCS and many others
Sid Fest was a four day festival that took place in Sidney Park Cleethorpes on the August Bank Holiday weekend 2016 featuring a fun fair, live music stage, and a broad range of activities and side stalls. This was the first large scale public event to be held in the park for a number of years.
The regeneration of Sidney Park had been identified by Big Local North Cleethorpes as a priority due to a result of resident consultation frequently highlighting the demise of the amenity and its association with crime and anti-social behaviour. Supporting the community festival was important to Big Local as part of the Parks and Open Spaces theme as well as being an opportunity to provide some entertainment for local people and to have a chance to engage with everyone to decide if more could be done to support the park.
Consultations around the park revealed several infrastructure and park user issues: the toilets were not open, the pond and pathways were not regularly maintained, flower beds, trees and shrubs were in a poor condition, current buildings were in need of repair and the disposal of the park’s rubbish was not frequent enough.
Big Local saw the Festival as an opportunity for engagement with local residents and users of the Park and was able to gather information about peoples’ aspirations and priorities. Between 3,000 and 4,000 people attended the Festival and the Big Local stall was staffed over the whole four days. The festival event itself was a huge success and was massively dependant on a huge number of volunteers to run it.
The event demonstrated the Park’s potential for hosting entertainment, music, art and sporting activities with the majority of visitors over the four days living within walking distance of the Park.
Whilst the event was a success, the next step was to use the consultation to decide on next steps for the development of the park itself. This involved a number of steps over the next few years.
Investment
Around £5600 was invested by Big Local North Cleethorpes. There was a huge amount of volunteer activity to host the festival and free provision of a range of resources for the event to the tune of over £20000 of match funding.
