The 2016 Jesmond Community Festival starts with a warm-up event on Friday May 6th, features a spectacular parade on Saturday May 7th and continues with nearly 100 events through to Sunday May 22nd.

For the first time local bar 97 & Social was host to the press launch of the festival, attended by the Lord Mayor of Newcastle, and hosted by Majorie Dodds, the town crier and resident of Jesmond, who opened the event. Stilt walkers and festival performers including musicians were also in attendance.

Chris Clarke, one of the festival organisers, is excited for this year’s events, telling JesmondLocal that “we have all sorts of individual organisations that organise their own events. The community forum concentrates to get it all together within a two week period.”

For the first time in the 15-year history of the festival in its current incarnation, Heaton Manor School will be taking part for the first time. “Heaton Manor School is organising a free food tasting event, and it is great to have them involved,” Clarke said.

Clarke picked out some of his favourite potential events: “there are some good concerts, but I think there is a particular good one this year at the Royal Grammar School. Moreover, this year we have two events associated with the dementia friendly initiative and it’s the first time we have these kind of events taking place within the festival.”

However financial problems could be an issue for the festival in coming years. “Some of the individual organisations have their own charity that they want to raise money for but the festival itself needs to raise money,” Clarke noted. “For the last few years we’ve been heavily dependent on the city council, and the money that we can get is about to get reduced next year. Thus, we need to top up our funds this year so to be sure that we can carry it on in the future.”

Publicity is also an issue. “But,” Clarke says, “if you organise a similar thing every year, gradually you get more people that remember it and look out for the programme. People who enjoyed the events last year will be looking out for the new ones now. So, we encourage everybody to get a hold of the programme or look at the festival website and join us to as many events as possible. We have a variety of events for different ages.”

Ian Graham, the Lord Mayor of Newcastle, also shared his excitement for the festival, telling JesmondLocal that “it’s one of the longest established community festivals in Newcastle and of course when it started it was just a festival for a particular day in the calendar, but now it’s lasting almost two weeks incorporating all of the community groups within Jesmond, including schools, churches and other organisations. I feel it could be used as a starting point for other communities within the city, that they could come and ask for help, so different communities will be able to contribute towards the festival.”

He added: “It can expand and it will. The problem we have with regards to the city at the moment is that we are in a period of austerity, while the central authorities are losing a lot of funds and basically that means that we have to be a lot more innovative about how we fund these things.”

Emphasising the importance of Jesmond’s festival, the Lord Mayor said: “The festival gives Jesmond its identity. Personally, I considered Jesmond having its own identity, but it’s a community itself rather than city wide and of course the kind of exposure this type of festival has would, in effect, add to the attraction of Jesmond to the rest of the city and outside the city.”

The 2016 Jesmond Community Festival is something for everyone, with choral concerts, talks, readings, open days, family fun activities, walking tours, jazz, competitions, a fair and much more. Most events free will be free, unless otherwise stated.

The festival itself runs from May 6– 22. The full festival programme can be found at http://www.jesmondfestival.org.uk and JesmondLocal will be publishing festival event previews and articles throughout the month.