2023-2024 was a non-stop year for the young people of our Leicestival project. Getting involved with Leicester’s diverse range of festivals and events, they’ve been developing their events- and heritage-skills. Alongside them, the FOCUS TV sub-group have compiled their knowledge and research into a series of mini-documentaries.
To round up all the hard work they’d done, the Leicestival cohort took over the Haymarket Shopping Centre with an interactive exhibition.
The Leicestival Exhibition highlighted the importance of festivals and events in Leicester. It consisted of five interactive heritage boards, focused on some of Leicester’s most prominent festivals:
Diwali,
Leicester Comedy Festival,
the Riverside Festival,
Leicester Pride Festival, and
the Textiles Festival
The exhibition ran for three days, with over 100 people visiting and taking part. The young people were able to gather 55 brilliant responses through their public questionnaire.
Finishing the exhibition with a closing ceremony, young people gave a tour to family, friends, funders, and festival creators. They also showed off their newly-created Leicester Comedy Festival mini-documentary. A massive well done to them for their hard work, giving their voice to help shape accessible festivals and events.
The year of research and contributions that went into the exhibition will also prove handy in the next few months. Leicestival’s young people will be forming their concepts for their own festival which we plan to launch in 2025. They’re excited to start planning, working alongside other festival creators and local festival management teams.
