Friday and Saturday saw the first ever Abbey Beer Festival.
Many local breweries were represented at the event held in the ground floor of the Abbey Buildings.
People bought a card for £7 which allowed 2 pints or 4 half pints. Bands, and folk artists were playing most of the time. The event was intended to bring new people to the Abbey Buildings, and did bring in a lot of new people particularly on Friday.
The next Beer Festival is likely to be in a warmer month.
As said in my other post about the festival I thoroughly enjoyed Friday evening there. Roll on the next one and as said above hopefully it’ll be warmer as even with all the people in there the Abbey Buildings didn’t seem to heat up at all.
It did strike me that even though I’ve lived in the town since the mid 70’s I’ve never visited them or the Unicorn Theatre, something I’ll put right in the next week or two.
I noticed there was a security man counting people in and out of the event is there a figure for the number of people who attended?
My favourite beer of the evening? was Gozzard’s Guzzler but I’m slightly biased, seek it out and try some for yourself.
Don’t know who organised this but it’s refreshing to hear that the motive was to increase town footfall and not increasing a publicans takings !
Badger – there were 450 people there over the two days – and the majority of them were people like you who have lived in the town for years but never set foot in them. The Friends of Abingdon, a charity which owns and looks after the Buildings on behalf of the town, has run a number of events this year to show them off to a wider range of the community and we will try more ideas next year.
There are plays and concerts on all year round – see the Friends of Abingdon and Music at the Unicorn websites for upcoming performances.
If you just want to visit the Buildings, which represent a really important part of the town’s history, they are open on summer afternoons (May-September) – check http://friendsofabingdon.org.uk/ for days and times.Entry is free, but donations to help with their upkeep are very much appreciated.
Hester, does this not once more illustrate the need for a one site fits all town web site ?
I had no idea this was happening… Sad I missed it.
I had been thinking about trying to set up a beer festival in town so good to see someone has done it for me!
Capt K – as so often, I agree with you, but go about doing something about it in different ways. I was actively involved (via ChAP) in setting up and running the town portal which was intended to do just that and continued to support it when the TC took over. I hope that the TC and Visit Abingdon will find some way to combine their resources to produce the desired result and will be working on that by talking to both. Knowing how much work it involves, i rather doubt if a third party would have the resources to set up – and maintain – something good, so that wouldnt be my preferred route – but if anyone can good luck to them!
Where was this advertised ? I can think of numerous people who would have attended..such a pity!
Re post no 7, we are back to the perennial problem – there is no one advertising route that works for everyone. There were posters and leaflets all around town, it was widely advertised on Facebook, it was on the town events calendar (www.abingdon.gov.uk/events), on Radio Oxford a couple of times, I think it was in the Herald/Oxford Mail, Backstreeter previewed it on this blog on 5 December etc etc. If the lady, or other readers can let us know where they would like to see things advertised I am sure all events organisers would welcome ideas – but please don’t suggest leaflets through your door – they cost an arm and a leg to deliver, use up loads of paper and for everyone who says “great” there are probably half a dozen who put it straight into recycling!
H, thereby lays a conundrum, I don’t have a Facebook account or Twitter thing and I don’t listen to radio Oxford, I do buy the Herald, but don’t recall seeing the advert? I didn’t see any physical advertising anywhere either, in fact if it hadn’t been for this blog it would have come and gone and I would have been none the wiser, there was a time when events were advertised locally with posters and banners, flyers in the coffee ships, but I guess that’s all behind us now and people like myself ( and possibly the lady) along with thousands of others will remain sublmly ignorant to local events?
Sorry Capt K – once again I agree with you, of course we need to continue with physical advertising, which is why I personally plastered the windows of FreeSpace with posters a week beforehand (and there were a few up in there before that) and others tramped round town putting posters and flyers in all the places you mention! I am sorry you didn’t see any of them.
I have been trying for years to persuade the TC to put up “approved” banner sites on the outskirts of town – putting them up on railings etc runs the risk of having them confiscated – I am still trying!