Introduction
Context
An authentic voice for Lancashire and the North West, Encounter Festival celebrates the breadth of the County's diverse cultural offer.
Showcasing high quality and high profile arts, Encounter Festival sees the City of Preston buzzing with life and alight with creativity amongst an array of spectacular performances, inspiring arts and impressive music.
The City of Preston, the Lancashire County and those further afield are brought together by Encounter Festival, with bustling streets and opportunities for involvement, creating a memorable and vibrant weekend.
The first Encounter Festival was staged by Preston City Council as a pilot in 2015. Showcasing the work of artists from across the Lancashire County and community activities, the pilot weekend drew in 20,000 attendees. With the event's potential to grow and impact the communities, artists and arts organisations of Lancashire, as well as attract visitors into the County, Encounter Festival has since continued to develop:
- 2015 pilot
- Following the pilot, the first full scale Encounter Festival was hosted in 2016 Brief Encounter was held in September 2017 to maintain the momentum, keep the spirit alive and launch the following year's festival The second full scale festival was held in September 2018
- Brief Encounter was held in September 2019
- The first post pandemic Encounter was held over a number of days in September and October 2021
- Full Encounter Festival was held in September 2022
- Full Encounter Festival was held in September 2023
- Full Encounter Festival was held in September 2024
Typically, the full Encounter Festival was run for the Friday evening, Saturday daytime and evening and Sunday daytime. For 2024, the format changed to cover the daytime and evening of Saturday 21 September and the daytime of Sunday 22 September.
Encounter Festival is part of Without Walls, a network of organisations bringing innovative outdoor arts to towns and cities across England.
Encounter Festival returned in 2024 with a fresh new look and with the Torchlight Procession and firework spectacle once again taking centre stage.
Saturday involved such activities as playing on the giant marble run, getting involved in the chilled silent disco and enjoying epic shows across the Bus Station and the Flag Market.
Choirs and Qawwali performances were held on the Community and Traditions Stage to showcase all of the groups that perform in Preston throughout the year.
The 2024 Encounter Festival follows the coming of age of the event in 2023; a year where the full programme was run, was supported by fair weather and which attracted 50,000 visitors.
The two day arts and cultural extravaganza in 2024 again transformed the heart of Preston into a vibrant hub of creativity, unity and celebration, through its diverse line up of performances, workshops and activities.
The aim of Encounter Festival 2024 was for visitors to discover new experiences, find inspiration and have fun.
The evaluation
The evaluation of Encounter Festival has been undertaken for the pilot and for each of the full Encounter Festivals; providing significant insight on the success and impact of the events through encompassing the views of visitors, partners and artists.
Providing insight into the performance of the wide range of Encounter Festival activities and scope, the evaluations support the development of Encounter Festival and other Preston City Council events.
For 2023 and 2024, the main focus of the primary evaluation changed. Using Audience Agency questions, visitor profile data now forms the basis for the primary research.
To illustrate the recorded success of the delivery of the range of activities over the previous years, the evaluation data prior to 2023 was contained within the annex of the 2023 evaluation report.
The scope of the evaluation activity for 2024 comprises:
- Visitor survey conducted face-to-face using Audience Agency questions (173 interviews)
- Feedback from performers and partner case studies Media data and other supporting data
- Details of the range of visitor survey analysis undertaken is detailed in Annex 4.
The 2024 programme
Saturday 21 September 2024
The activities at The Flag Market on the Saturday ranged from watching fabulous, joyful shows, taking part in a Bollywood Dance workshop, to learning to play a new instrument in the Petting Zoo.
At The Bus Station, the iconic space hosted incredible sights, great sounds and family festival favourites and Magical Story Jars, where visitors could create their own jars with their creative craft activities. Let's Grow Preston also joined in the activities this year with a harvest of wonder.
Outside The Guild Hall featured Preston People's Choir, Hussnain Hanif and The Nasheed Choir, the return of Urooj Qawwal and the Song of Life project led by Stef Portersmith and involving many other Lancashire singing groups.
There was a total of 13 different acts delivered over 18 performances on the Saturday, running from 11.45am through to the culmination of the Torchlight Procession which started at 7.15pm and fireworks beginning at 9pm.
The singing programme, Encounter Voices has run since 2018. This year, the event collaborated with Lancashire's yearlong celebration of grassroots singing, County of Song. "Lights That Lead Us There" welcomed in the autumn with songs of love, longing and light. This included both familiar favourites and new works by composer and choir leader, Loz Kaye. People could take part by joining workshops at The Guild Hall in August and September, and with the finale at the festival itself on 21 September.
One of the two new commissions for 2024 was Same But Different; an accessible silent disco DJ'd by The Fat Britney and Matthew Beautyman. It was produced by Blaze Arts Access All Areas producers, a group of young disabled artists led by local theatre maker, Helena Ascough. Same But Different ran from 2.05pm to 3.50pm at The Bus Station on Saturday.
The other new commission for 2024 was accessible all day, both on Saturday and Sunday, where visitors had the opportunity to experience Imitating the dog's Ribble of Dreams installations. Being able to follow a range of wonderful stories around the shop fronts surrounding the Flag Market, this comprised magical story boxes for visitors to peer into for an extraordinary journey through the city.
In the lead up to the procession on Saturday, from 6.30pm, visitors could have a drink and a dance on the Flag Market to DJs Soulhouse Avenue and Buddha, playing soul, reggae and popular music or experience Preston City Centre's pubs and restaurants.
The Saturday night Torchlight Procession and Firework Finale included stilt walkers, drummers and Morris Dancers as the procession made its way into the city centre from Deepdale Road down Church Street and finishing at the Flag Market.
Leading the procession was newly commissioned brass band, BRAZEN, which celebrates women brass players. Event organisers had been working with a talented female arranger and a highly experienced female composer to create new music for the group and to share with visitors for the first time.
Torchlight Procession performers also included:
- The Lumens, a stilt duo covered in colour changing fibre optic lights and mirrored suits to reflect and enhance the lights and their surroundings
- Preston City Mela who brought their usual celebration of South Asian arts
- The Caribbean Carnival who brought sounds and wonderful brightly coloured costumes
- Hellfyre Magpie, the fire border morris team
- Rivington North West Morris Dancers
- New for 2024, the procession had some of the best Carnival Morris troupes
- Local dance schools and bands including, among many more; Jenisha Patel's Bollywood Dance School, Worldwise Samba, Jazz Swing Dance, Bay Beat and Cacophony Arkestra.
Sunday 22 September 2024
On Sunday, the event was focused in Winckley Square with family shows, a range of food stalls, games and craft activities to fill the day. Including the Invisible Man walking down Fishergate, good music, family games, face painting and henna artists all contributed to the activities. Magical Story Jars were at the event again for the second day for visitors to make their own Preston Lamb.
Starting at 11am, Sunday saw 6 different acts over 12 performances running from 11am into the afternoon.
Formerly 'Best of Preston', 'Best of Lancashire' has been part of Encounter since 2022.
Showcasing live, original music from around the county, artists clamour to play under the Victorian Preston Market canopy which provides perfect cover for an outdoor music event. This year, four original bands and four singersongwriters entertained local music fans at this free event which ran from 1pm - 6pm.