Announcement: 2025 Plans

For 21 years, SouthWestFest has been a celebration of creativity, culture, and community spirit. Participation has been at the heart of our success, from local venues hosting activities to local organisation organising events; to countless people volunteering and thousands of residents attending the broad festival programme. In order to continue providing these vibrant, inclusive, and meaningful experiences that we all cherish, our board of Trustees has decided to take a pause from producing the festival in 2025. 

This pause will allow us to take a step back from production to engage deeply with our community, and explore new ways to ensure the festival remains sustainable for the future. We believe that by taking the time to reconnect with local people and partners, to really listen, we will be better placed to understand new needs, evaluate our approach, and build capacity to come back stronger and better than ever in 2026. 

Don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere, Dodie and the team will be actively working with residents and organisations throughout the year to develop a new model that meets local needs and wants, so we can continue to be an asset delivering for the community.

All of us at SouthWestFest deeply value your continued support, we know it is vital for our shared success. We look forward to working together in this time of reflection, outreach and strategy, and as always, we welcome your ideas, feedback, and involvement as we plan for the next chapter of our charity.

If you’d like to volunteer to be part of this exciting year of development and change drop us a line at director[at]southwestfest.org.uk. We are actively seeking to build a Volunteer Engagement Team.

We will be sharing our progress, findings and opportunities throughout the year. If you’re not already, we encourage you to sign-up to our mailing list here, as well as follow our Instagram page, where all our news will be shared.

SWF Team