A NEW festival to celebrate Swindon’s growing creative arts scene is being planned for the town.

The Swindon Spring Festival, which would run throughout the whole month of May next year, is in the works following a highly successful Festival of Literature earlier this month.

Matt Holland is the mastermind behind the idea and hopes the festival would help Swindon celebrate all that it has to offer, and to offer all that it has to celebrate from the worlds of dance, food, music and drama.

“I am testing the water to see what interest is out there at the moment,” Matt said.

“This sort of thing hasn’t been tested for a while but the Swindon Festival of Literature has kept growing.

“Launching the Spring Festival seemed the natural way to expand the Festival of Literature and we have worked to make it a cross arts event with dancing, music, art and literature.

“There will be something for everyone and it strikes me as a real opportunity to build on cultural tourism in Swindon.

“People travel from afar to come to the Festival of Literature. Why not capitalise on that to expand further?”

The Swindon Spring Festival would put on and celebrate a range of cultural activities that are not only created in Swindon but also imported from further afield.

From dance, music, drama, art, film, circus, gastronomy and literature, the festival would stage the performances over the course of the month with themed weekends.

They would be hosted with the support of partners and venues that are currently used in the Festival of Literature including the Wyvern Theatre, the Arts Centre, the Central Library, Swindon Dance, Lower Shaw Farm, Richard Jefferies Museum, Lawn Wood, STEAM Museum and Lydiard Park.

This year, the Swindon Festival of Literature celebrated its 20th anniversary and saw a huge range of authors make their way to the town to talk about their latest books and other issues for discussion.

To gauge interest for the Spring Festival, Matt is organising a meeting for any organisations or individuals wanting to get involved to pool ideas, make suggestions and plan the exciting new festival.

“My practical wish in doing this is to spread the message broadly and not narrow things down, so that we are able to showcase everything and hopefully get some big names in as well,” Matt added.

“Culture isn’t just dancing or music, it is cooking and circus skills too.

“You can even say running and walking have something cultured about them and those are two things we have celebrated at the Festival of Literature.

“For the past five years, we have combined talks about physical wellbeing and people have flocked to that.

“I think the name Swindon Spring Festival has a lovely ring to it as well.”

Anyone who would like to know more, attend, or make any helpful suggestions, should write to swindonspringfest@lowershawfarm.co.uk or ring 01793 771080