Next August may seem a long way off but it’s been a busy time at Wickham HQ. We’ve just published our first batch of artists for 2018 on our home page. We normally wait until December but couldn’t wait to share the exciting news via our social channels.
Next year we’ll be welcoming:
- Kate Rusby
- Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings
- The Undertones
- Tom Robinson
- Skipinnish
- The Red Hot Chilli Pipers
- Drever/McCusker/Woomble
- Gordie McKeeman & His Rhythm Boys
- Imar
- Talisk
- Daoiri Farrell
- Boo Hewerdine
- Gaz Brookfield and the Company of Thieves
- The Gerry Colvin Band
- Les Barker
This really is just a teaser for what’s to come next year… all our planned headliners are still under wraps! We haven’t had time to compile artist pages yet or confirm which day each artist is appearing. So our line up section still shows 2017 artists and we’re not releasing day tickets until next January.
We’ve also just published a couple of new pages. First off we’ve added our Wickham Festival 2017 Gallery page. Thank you to Guy Reece of Striking Faces fame for managing our photographers. We had quite a team which included Paul Brett, David Horrocks, David Mence, Ffion Edgeley and Jim Houlbrook.
There were some fantastic photos so please visit our 2017 Gallery page and see if you can spot yourself. It’s impossible to pick a favourite but as always it’s the *Real Stars of Wickham* category that we love most and like to mix them up amongst the artist pictures.
Each year we’re invaded by a tartan army who have declared “Kilt Sunday” for Wickham visitors to show off their knees and all things Scottish. We promise you’ll never meet a friendlier bunch of people. It’s not just for the gents so please remember to pack your kilt for Sunday August 5th 2018. Next year we’ll post a reminder for the “group photo time” in front of our main stage to make sure you’re all there with sporran and an ale in hand. Watch this space!
Our deckchair always gets plenty of use over the weekend. Perhaps this mob had only just met or is family and friends out for the day, either way loved this picture…
This is exactly what defines our event, a weekend that makes visitors smile and motivates us to organise it. Don’t forget if you’ve got your own snaps from the deckchair just #wickhamfestival via Instagram and share your creations on our feed page. Here’s some proof those pesky swing-hungry kids didn’t completely ransack our chill out zone intentions…
We’re currently debating ideas for next year. We thought the older kids could chill out with cocktail to hand and Andy Fairweather-Low in earshot but the younger kids had other swing-based notions. Answers on a postcard via Facebook please. There’s some incredible photography including this young chap that David Horrocks captured. He’s sure got life sussed early on…
We really couldn’t decide which of these outfits was our favourite. We’re not sure if it was a coincidence but the girl has worn all the colours from our website. As soon as we saw her picture we thought boom … that girl looks super cool and has to go on our home page. The lady has got very creative seamstress skills, we’ve never seen an outfit like that. You both look fantastic and we salute your wardrobe skills…
As for some bizarre things we saw, what’s going on here? Clearly the first thing you always pack for an August music festival is an Xmas tree and Santa hat!
OK we did actually have some artist pictures captured in 2017 so here’s one we really loved. We’re nearly sure Tankus are back next year and they always put on an energetic show.
Obviously leaping off steaming pianos and doing limbo poses to camera whilst singing to a few thousand people is run of the mill stuff to most of us at the weekend, but it was handy that one of the Striking Faces team captured this for us! On a final note we’re hugely grateful that many of you appreciated our efforts with the awful weather that mired our start to the weekend. In case you missed the muddy antics …
We know some of you weren’t happy and without your feedback we couldn’t make improvements. Our staff and artists also suffered early on with arriving to the festival site. We promise that we’ve listened and have an action plan for next year to address the bottlenecks which could have eased Wickham Festival 2017’s biggest grumbles.
To get our website fully ready for next year we’ve also archived everything from 2017 on this page. It’s got all content from last year in one handy place! In the coming months we’ll be updating our line up section, once we do you’ll know where the 2017 line up lives
We’re sure you know the incredible savings to be made by booking early, but our friends at Festival Glamping have also just announced they’re getting in on the Earlybird’s too. So head on over to their site for some great early savings!
