‘Magical’ return for award winning festival
AN award winning festival for families is back for another year.
The Just So Festival is a weekend-long event aimed at families eager to get out into the countryside, spend some quality time together and even hit each other with cushions in a wild and rowdy pillow fight.
Set up by Rowan Hoban and Sarah Bird, directors of Macclesfield’s Wild Rumpus, and named National Festival of the Year in 2015, it will this year run from August 19-21.
It’s the brainchild of Sarah and Rowan who first met in 2008 at a local book club.
After chatting about the mediocre family festivals they’d both been to, they realised someone had to create something fresh, and within a year Just So Festival was born.
Since then they have been called upon to replicate the event in Brazil, and are in talks with teams from New Zealand about staging a festival there in 2018.
Speaking of their Cheshire event, which will be held in Rode Hall, Rowan said: “At Just So 2016, audience members will be journeying through the most magical, aweinspiring landscape for three nights.
“They must watch carefully the whole journey. As Roald Dahl once said, the best adventures and greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.”
She added: “Every year the festival gets better and better. We’ve got some incredible programming, with premiers of two amazing new family theatre shows as well as foot stomping bands, spellbinding authors, award winning children’s comedians, phenomenal circus acts and everything from Can-Can workshops, to Laughing Yoga, pillow fights to midnight feasts and a lot of eating singing, dancing and playing round campfires under the stars in the most beau- tiful environment.
“We really want to take families out of their dayto-day lives and into a wonderland of artistic adventures where they create memories together that will last a lifetime.
“We count it as a success when we look out from the stage on the Sunday evening to a sea of families dressed up in amazing costumes, laughing, dancing and cheering together – there’s no better feeling.”
Tickets start from £50 for an adult’s day ticket and £20 for a child’s day ticket, with local residents eligible for a £5 discount.
For information and to buy tickets visit justsofestival.org.uk.