Settle Flowerpot Festival stacks up

While many festivals across the world have had to concede to COVID, community initiative Settle Flowerpot Festival just keeps on growing.

Colourful and creative, the festival is a welcome outdoor event that captures the interest of locals and visitors alike. It is estimated that several thousand flowerpots have been utilized in creating the diverse and entertaining exhibits on display around the small market town in the Yorkshire Dales.

Individual households, business and community groups have contributed impressive installations guaranteed to raise a smile, from a full-size Harry Potter and Hedwig to the giant crayfish hanging from a bridge over the Ribble.

Three different trails have been created to help visitors armed with a free town map to discover the exhibits; the Town Centre trail, Lower Settle & Giggleswick, and Upper Settle. The trail sheets are available at £2, each with around 50 varied educational and entertaining questions aimed at all ages and naturally relating to the exhibits.

There are no prizes and no permissions required, so visitors are also welcome to have a go themselves, bringing along their own exhibit to take a photograph of it in situ and post on the Festival’s Facebook page.

Organiser Steve Amphlett explains “We do little other than encourage people to get involved and get creative. There is no theme for the festival, other than ‘make people smile!’, so people can create whatever takes their fancy. This year we’ve everything from book and TV characters through to dinosaurs.  The trails are a great safe way for people to enjoy emerging from lockdown without having to be crammed together.”

With a record number of participants in this its eighth year, the Festival runs through till 5^th September.