New festival to celebrate local heritage and landscape

New festival to celebrate local heritage and landscape this June

• The Chilterns Summer Festival will run from June 13-21 in 2020
• The festival is a new annual event

The Chilterns Summer Festival is an ambitious new event, aiming to engage with families, young people and urban communities across the Chilterns this June. With a schedule of events 9 days long (June 13-21), including workshops, food fairs, themed railway rides, guided walks, and town centre festival events, the festival is breaking new ground. “We wanted to create a festival that ensures people do two things- they have fun and they learn something new about the Chilterns” says Lizzie Buckley, the festival’s organiser and the Community Engagement Officer for the Chalk, Cherries and Chairs Landscape Partnership. The new festival is the biggest community engagement event planned as part of the ambitious five-year National Heritage Lottery funded Chalk, Cherries and Chairs Landscape Partnership scheme, which focuses on transforming people’s connection to the landscape and cultural heritage of the region. Since the Countryside Festival in 2015, there hasn’t been a festival this size to celebrate all that the Chilterns has to offer, and so the Chilterns Summer Festival is hoping to bring together many communities and local businesses together to make this an inclusive event.

The headline event of the festival will be the ‘Discover the Chilterns’ Family Day on the Wycombe Rye, on June 14th, 2020. This event will include:

• Delicious food of course!
• Free kids’ activities
• Arts and crafts stalls
• Guided walks
• Outdoor yoga
• Traditional games
• Face painting

Other events during the 9-day festival will include local brewery tours and tastings, guided walks through Wendover Woods, theatre performances, evening talks and demonstrations, a bodgers’ breakfast in the woods, an adventure supper at a local farm, workshops for local historians and creatives, and various large scale artworks!

The festival team are currently looking for local community groups, businesses, artists and crafts people who want to be involved, and who may want to organise their own themed event as part of the festival. The team is looking for events themed around local history and wildlife. Interested parties can find out more on the project’s website: www.chilternsaonb.org/ccc-fest and can also contact Lizzie Buckley for more information on