The second Bushey Acoustic Festival took place on June 2, bringing together talented musicians, actors and magicians together for a packed day of local culture.
Originally set up by Raymond Coffer, a retired artist manager now cultural historian, in 2018 the day festival has rapidly grown inside a tiny park off Warren Road.
This year saw the festival expand from three stages to four across Mary Forsdyke Garden and Warren Lake as over 50 acts performed on the day.
Raymond said: “It’s fair to say that it was enormously successful. We have huge amounts of talent in Bushey and it was terrific to see musicians and bands of all ages performing.
“Councillors and our MP turned up without hesitation, it’s hard to explain – it was the best day in Bushey ever.”
The park is owned by Hertsmere Borough Council who allowed Raymond to set up the festival after appealing for ideas on how to get residents using the village’s green spaces.
Raymond added: “On the day we had terrific volunteers and couldn’t do it without HBC – they own the venue after all.
“All of the four stages were positioned so you couldn’t hear two at the same time. The sound engineers from InspireAll did an amazing job and people loved it. This festival is all about the music, you have to sit there and watch it as the stages are so close together.
“On the Wildflower stage we had buskers and singer/songwriters performing and in between the acts we had poetry from local poets – it was very cool and kind of hippie in a sense. It was completely off the ball and I thought it was a great idea.”
To finalise, Raymond said: “People may never make it big but they’re extremely talented. There’s nothing that’s not allowed as long as we can fit it in – there’s a huge community buzz and that’s what it’s really about.”
Raymond has already got his sights set on hosting a third festival next year. He told BusheyNews he has a provisional date of June 7.
Picture courtesy of Lawrence Stone
0 Comments