Gisburn Forest gears up for family festival

The annual family friendly festival, which reaches its seventh anniversary, has become a key event in the county’s family arts calendar, offering a three day escape into Lancashire’s largest forest, with a full programme of arts, activities, leisure pursuits, live music and food and drink.

Tickets can be bought for the whole weekend, for the day, or as a day/night ticket, allowing for one full day with single night’s camping.

“We have made the tickets more flexible this year,” explains co-organiser Matt Evans.

“We have more home comforts than ever before with hot showers and extra toilets, but we appreciate that camping for a number of nights is not for everyone so the one day/night camp is a great way to get a really good taste of what the festival has to offer.”

Cloudspotting starts at lunch-time on the Friday. A range of activities begin in the afternoon and the live music starts at 4pm. Access on Saturday and Sunday is from 11am for day ticket holders.

Families will be entertained with outdoor theatre productions, forest arts and crafts, storytelling, circus skills, sports day activities (Saturday) and a live music programme across three stages. There will be drumming workshops, songwriting workshops and even a Cloudspotting Choir to join, with the opportunity to perform on the main stage. For the night owls, there is also a late venue, Cabin in the Woods that features DJs and dancing to the small hours.

Tickets – and full line-up details – are available via the festival website: www.cloudspotting-festival.co.uk

Production director Helen Ficorilli added: “As ever the festival will be promoting quality across all artistic platforms with families particularly well catered for. We are excited about a really wide ranging family arts and activity programmes connecting our audience with our beautiful forest location.”

Cloudspotting camp opens from noon on Friday, July 28th, to noon on Monday, July 31st.

Adult weekend tickets cost £109, teen tickets £55, two to 12 year old tickets £30, live-in vehicle £30, car parking pass £10.