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Salford City Council and From The Other delivered Get In! To Eccles, a brand-new festival in Eccles town centre on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March 2026. For one weekend, streets and venues across Eccles came alive with performances, installations and unexpected moments, giving everyone a reason to see the town in a whole new light.
The festival featured the playful, interactive installation Train Dreaming by Lowri Evans at Eccles Train Station, inspired by its passengers and volunteers, as well as 6 Music Festival and FaT OuT present Lauren Auder, Naima Bock & R.AGGS at Eccles Town Hall Ballroom, while Eccles Community Chess Club, the only dedicated high-street chess venue in the North West, hosted a full-blown Tandem Chess Simul, giving the public the rare chance to challenge a UK Grandmaster and the resident Candidate Master as they took on multiple games at once.
The wider programme was extensive; audiences could enjoy live music in local venues, an artisan market, interactive installations, family-friendly performances, tonnes of activities, and plenty of chances to get stuck in and join the action. Visitors were able to head down for a quick look, spend the day exploring, or build a full weekend out of it around the headline acts. While the festival itself sat at the heart of it all, it also shone a light on Eccles’ independent businesses, venues and cultural life, celebrating the town and the community that makes it tick.
Salford City Council and From The Other asked us to work on Get In! To Eccles, and we had the time of our lives publicising the brand-new festival in our hometown.
Throughout the campaign we collaborated closely with the 6 Music Festival publicity team at the BBC to ensure our work complemented theirs, and vice versa. The coverage built exactly how we’d planned. Regional, broadcast, theatre, trade and consumer titles all engaged with it across different stages of the rollout. That included two features in the Manchester Evening News (one about the festival’s artisan market and another about grassroots venues in collaboration with 6 Music Festival), interviews across BBC Radio Manchester and BBC Radio 6 Music, a review on British Theatre Guide, and a national trade feature in Festival Insights.
The trade coverage was particularly important. It allowed us to step back slightly and talk about the role of hyper-local festivals in the wider industry, and why projects like this matter. They create platforms for artists, bring new audiences into cultural spaces, and build the foundations that larger festivals rely on.
At the same time, we saw consistent support from Manchester and Salford’s consumer and news titles, with repeat coverage at each stage helping to generate awareness in the lead-up to an incredibly successful weekend.
"Like many towns that neighbour major cities Eccles is somewhat culturally overlooked, but through Get In! To Eccles its creative output is being proudly showcased."
"For participants and non-commuters who attend, Train Dreaming offers simple, silly pleasures that cannot fail to raise a smile…”
