Flowerpot festival Settles in to record year

A community led initiative in the Yorkshire Dales has grown beyond the organizer’s expectation with 200+ exhibits and more arriving daily.

Featured as an inspirational event by The Great Exhibition of The North, which celebrates great art, culture, design and innovation, Settle Flowerpot Festival runs through till September 2^nd and has captured the interest of locals and visitors alike.

With a record number of participants in this its fifth year, it is estimated that several thousand flowerpots have been utilized in creating the diverse and entertaining exhibits on display around the small market town on the edge of The Three Peaks. Individual households, business and community groups have contributed impressive installations, from the 10ft climber mounted on the face of Castleberg Crag overlooking the town and lit up with 600 LEDs at night, to the tiny fairies adorning a wall outside a house on Castleberg Lane.

The Festival was conceived by the Vibrant Settle Community Partnership, an initiative spearheaded by local residents Steve Amphlett and Tony Hardwick. The objective was to encourage the economic sustainability of Settle, a town with an ageing demographic of just 2,500 people which has not significantly increased in over 100 years.  The hope was that the festival would help to support the many independent shops to survive, by not only attracting visitors to the town but also of holding them there for a few hours and encouraging exploration beyond the picturesque market square. Rather than limiting the event to a fleeting or intensive weekend or week, the nature of the event means that it can run all summer to support and boost the normal running of the town.

Three different trails have been created to help visitors armed with a free town map to discover the exhibits; the Town Centre trail, Lower Settle & Giggleswick, and Upper Settle. The trail sheets are available at £2, each with around 50 varied educational and entertaining questions aimed at all ages and naturally relating to the exhibits.

There are no prizes, and no permissions required, so visitors are also welcome to have a go themselves, bringing along their own exhibit to take a photograph of it in situ and post on the Festival’s Facebook page.

Sponsors of the Festival include local employer Tarmac and McCarthy & Stone who have a new retirement development in Settle, The Wickets.  In conjunction with the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, as part of the charity’s outreach work with refugees living in Leeds, Tony and Steve organised a Flowerpot workshop for them ahead of the Festival and they created a ‘flock’ of flowerpot sheep which are on display throughout the festival in the churchyard.

Steve explains “As organizers we do little other than encourage people to get involved and get creative. There is no theme for the festival other than ‘make people smile!’, so people can create whatever takes their fancy. This year we’ve everything from a dragon inspired by a business logo through to Rupert the Bear, not to mention Bill & Ben, of course!”

Tony adds “We don’t know what displays are being created until they start appearing around the town so we are as surprised and amused as everyone else!’