Entertainment

Summer is festival season of course and every year the fields and parks of Wiltshire are the setting for numerous annual outdoor events such as WOMAD, the Larmer Tree Festival and the Swindon Mela.

This year there is a new one to add to the list, and one which is hoped will become an established annual event in Swindon's summer calendar.

Trapeze artists will swing above the heads of hundreds of young people this July for the first ever Big Top Festival.

The Dacoits

The four day event featuring dance acts, circus performers, theatre groups and bands including Swindon's The Dacoits, will inspire and entertain crowds of young people and their families from Thursday 9th until Sunday 12th July.

More than 1,000 participants are behind the production of this ambitious cultural and sporting festival which is supported by RELAYS, a £3.1million project to inspire a generation of young people throughout South West England to get involved in events in their communities and learn new skills.

A packed programme of music, theatre, dance and circus performances, including new shows by Circo Ridiculoso and Circomedia, will be on offer.

Four local Primary Schools will be showcasing their new productions as will three young theatre companies - Swindon Young Actors, Bradon Forest and Shout Out Productions.

Circo Ridiculoso

The festival will culminate in a celebration of sport and a cricket match on the school field. RELAYS is supporting a local filmmaker to work with a group of young people from Bradon Forest School on a short film that will capture and document the best of the festival for posterity.

The festival started life as Bradon Forest School’s summer arts festival and has expanded so successfully that it has outgrown the School theatre.

It has no evolved into the Big Top Festival which will be held in a huge big top circus tent that will be set up in the school grounds at Purton near Swindon.

The festival marks Bradon Forest School’s first four successful years as a specialist school for the arts.

The School continues to hold this specialist status for the next four years and plans for the festival to become even bigger and better year on year.