This year, Ramsbottom Festival became Head for the Hills, with a gorgeous re-brand from our partner design agency Instruct Studio, and an incredible line up, bringing Beth Orton, Maximo Park and The Stranglers to headline this year’s event at Ramsbottom Cricket Club.
We couldn’t be happier to head to Bury to meet the team at The Met who organise the festival and hear all about the varied programme of fun, family friendly strands and the creative art performances that sit perfectly next to the incredible headline acts, other huge stars such as the Neville Staple Band and Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip), plus brilliant new music from across the UK and stellar home-grown talent including Dutch Uncles, Larkins and Cassia.
We formulated a multi-layered press and publicity strategy, highlighting every strand of the festival to its own audience. First up was the announcement of the new name, and where better than the BBC 6 Music News on the RadMac afternoon show, where Head for the Hills went down a storm with Bolton born Mark Radcliffe, alongside a fab interview with the inimitable Beth Orton.
Next up we looked to the nationals, folk press, parenting press, what’s on press and the arts press and were proud to see coverage appear in the Independent, Manchester Evening News, the Bury Times, the Bolton News and Creative Tourist to name but a few.
Making the occasion extra special Mancunian poet Tony Walsh, widely known as Longfella, has penned a typically rousing piece celebrating those personal and collective moments that only happen at your favourite festival with your favourite people. Tony will be performing the festival live on the main stage and it promises to bring a tear to the eye… in a good way.
Another one of our hobbies here at Sundae is craft beer so you can imagine our reaction when we found out that local keg fillers Silver Street Brewing Company have come on board to create the festival’s very own personal brew named after the festival with our mega talented friends at Instruct Studio designing the bespoke label.
This is no new partnership, more of a long standing friendship. The Head Brewer at Silver Street, Craig Adams, has been involved in the festival from the very beginning holding a number of different positions along the way; from being a sound engineer looking after the technical side of things to headlining the Big Top with his own band Thugs on Wolves and now supplying the official beer, Craig really is a part of the journey.
Not only is it an awesome idea and a downright great beer, the partnership with a local brewer conveys the community, all inclusive ethos of the festival that we and everybody else is already in love with.
There’s loads of press still to come, festival director David Agnew was on BBC Radio Manchester on Monday (at 2:45pm), we’ve got some artists chatting to the MEN, BBC 6 Music and much much more.
We literally cannot wait to Head for the Hills this week; it has been a pleasure to be involved with and, no doubt, it will be one helluva weekend that will last in the memory for years to come.
(Images: Tierney Gearon / Sebastian Matthes / Andrew Allcock)
Head for the Hills went down a storm with Bolton born Mark Radcliffe, alongside a fab interview with the inimitable Beth Orton.
