02/01/2026
fans Dumfries and Galloway! Whats Going on ?
2025 has been an extraordinary year for the festival. We won two prestigious awards, for our 2024 festival; the Eventit award for the best small festival in Scotland (for the second time!) and the Thistle Award for the Outstanding Cultural Event in the South of Scotland. It was truly wonderful to have such recognition!
However, it is our 2025 festival which will leave us with the most striking memories. As you may remember, the area had torrential rain the night before and when two of us who slept on site got up there were an awful lot of puddles in the park. Then, at 11, we had a thunderstorm and had to pretty much evacuate the site until the threat of lightning strikes had passed.
So what we will take most pride and strength from is the way that our volunteers, stallholders and entertainers were prepared to carry on and the way that so many people were still happy to come out, support us and have a great time. It was a truly heartwarming experience.
Sadly, despite our best efforts, we have been unable to secure funding in time to run the 2026 festival in June. While it might be possible to run it later in the year, our connection to the Scottish Refugee Festival is important to us and we have taken the difficult decision to work towards our next festival running in 2027.
That said we are working on some smaller projects which we hope to be able to put together for 2026 – so watch this space!
