Last minute funding has saved a popular arts event from being scrapped. ‘Febfest’, re-branded last year, is an annual arts programme that offers something for all ages to do during a three week period in February. The event officially opens on Monday 10th February at the McGuinness Gallery at Bishop Auckland Town Hall. The gallery is hosting a schools exhibition that has a theme of Japan: it’s art and culture.
Jane Crawford, festival director from Daisy Arts (a not-for-profit community arts group based in Woodhouse Close Church) said, “I hope that the programme this year has something that will entice all ages to get involved. “There’s theatre, music, film and workshops that offer the opportunity for all to come together to have fun and share in the vast creativity of the event.”
Year on year the festival has grown in size and ambition since its conception in 2005, culminating in the 2013 festival being the biggest to date. Febfest last year had an attendance of over 720 people, drawing in many visitors to the area, with twelve schools and eight community groups taking part in the exhibition. This year the exhibition has attracted a greater number of schools from the Bishop Auckland area, and the workshops during February half-term school break, although not as many on offer as last year, will continue to attract people to the town as well as offer much-needed employment to local artists.
For further information pick up a Febfest brochure from Bishop Auckland Town Hall.
Bishop Auckland's local community newspaper.
