Streams festival transforms Bunclody into wonderland
BUNCLODY was transformed into ‘Wonderland’ as this year’s Streams of Bunclody Festival got underway with an explosion of colour recently.
The theme of this year’s festival was ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and things got underway with a major parade on Friday night to announce the arrival of the Queen of Hearts into town. This was followed by lots of creative and colourful street entertainment after the festival was officially launched at The Art Bank by former councillor Deirdre Wadding.
The Saturday of the festival saw various artisan crafts stalls set up alongside even more street entertainment, storytelling and a lovely summer barbecue at the Garden Centre at Glanbia. Festival Director Jonathan King said that Glanbia provided great support for the festival, as did plenty of local businesses and volunteers. Sunday was family fun day and there was plenty for young and old on the grounds of Bunclody VEC including croquet on the lawn, but not using real flamingos and hedgehogs like Alice in Wonderland!
‘It was a wonderful weekend,’ he said. ‘It’s a real community effort and it’s wonderful to see people of all backgrounds come together. The goal was to try and create something different and I think we’ve succeeded with that. Each festival has its challenges and I think we’ve learnt a lot this year, but I think everyone enjoyed themselves. If my volunteer crew don’t enjoy it, I know there’s something wrong and we had a big meal to finish the festival yesterday (Sunday) and the consensus was, yeah, that was a good one.’
Having enjoyed a jam-packed weekend of activities, the festival committee will now take some time before throwing themselves head-first into coming up with a team for next year’s festival. They were delighted with how things went and thanked everyone who contributed in any way to the festival’s success.