By Cal Lucas
The annual Leicester Riverside Festival is due to take place for the 25th time this June and for the first time will expand onto the De Montfort University (DMU) campus.
Despite its inaugural event taking place in 1997, created after the area’s redevelopment, the festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID restrictions.
This year, the event on Saturday, June 1, and Sunday, June 2, will include activities on the DMU campus.
“We want to be able to use these events to celebrate and highlight local talent in various creative forms such as music and arts and crafts and we try and keep artists as local as we possibly can,” said Kellie Bugby, one of the event organisers for about nine years.
As ever, the event will be packed with many activities taking place in various places around Leicester Riverside such as Bede Park, Castle Gardens and, new for 2024, the grounds of DMU, following a new partnership with the university.
“We’ve created a new partnership with DMU and this year we are doing a leading project,” added Kellie.
“It’s about using the space and finding out what we can put on to engage people, giving people the opportunity to look at the gallery and the museums that DMU has to highlight the heritage of the area.
“It can be really intimidating for some people to explore buildings that they may never have been aware that they could visit.”
She hopes this event will be even more successful following the expansion and that it encourage more people to attend the festival and place DMU further on the map.
