Bollington Festival Marquee

Held every four or five years in various locations across Bollington, the festival is a volunteer run and funded by generous donations and fundraisers from its inhabitants and the surrounding areas. Organisers suggest that there is no other event like this one in the country, created in 1964 to increase the sense of community in the town. The next Festival will be held from Friday 10th May to Monday 27th May 2019. We’re looking forward to 17 days of fun, filled with exciting new projects and the birth of new community groups, in keeping with the festival founders’ aims of promoting community involvement and inclusivity.

A large marquee/Big Top on Bollington Rec is the biggest venue for the festival, and hosts the largest events.

The brain child of Dr John Coope, a doctor who cares for thousands of patients and wrote a book, almost singlehandedly set up the very first Bollington festival, to counteract the sense of drift he saw as a move away from community. He continued working on the festival until 2005 and was the driving force in the creation of the arts centre, and the leading and reviving of the Bollington brass brand, drama group, the civic society and the festival choir. It was even said that many of his patients who visited his surgery with sore throats were signed up to the bases in the choir before a prescription was written!