STROUD District Council leader Steve Lydon keeps you up to date with council matters

Friday, August 25

The Stroud Fringe Festival takes place over the August bank holiday weekend. Thousands of people will attend, so let’s hope the weather plays its part to make it more enjoyable for everyone attending and taking part.

Our tourism team has asked me to take this opportunity to point out the wealth of events that take place across the district, especially since tourism is worth over £144 million a year to the district.

Each year, there’s already quite a lot going on locally. For art lovers there’s the SITE Contemporary Arts Festival, Select Festival, Open Studio trails, Wotton-under-Edge Arts Festival and the Painswick Arts Festival. For outdoor and sport lovers there’s Heaven of the South, Mountain Mayhem and the Festival of British Eventing.

Of course the beautiful countryside, parks and gardens prove a huge draw for visitors, and these are bolstered by events such as the Stroud Festival of Nature, Dursley Walking Festival and Open Gardens attracting nature lovers throughout the summer. For music and beer lovers there’s the Stroud Fringe, Nibley Festival and Frocester Beer Festival.

On top of that there are other local festivals including the Randwick Wap, Bisley Well Dressing, Amberley Cow Hunt, Apple Days, Wassailing, Stroud Country Show, Dursley Carnival, Nailsworth Festival. I must confess that I haven’t even heard of them all but what it does highlight is the breadth of cultural activity we have in the district.

Obviously, attracting visitors is key the success of any event, and that’s where the council’s team wants to help. Stroud News & Journal does a great job of promoting events – in print and online - but it’s also worth taking advantage of other channels to get the message out. The tourism team runs a Facebook page fb.com/discoverstroud with over 3,000 subscribers and has nearly 4,000 twitter followers @DiscoverStroud. They also have a website and are keen that anyone running an event uploads it at visitthecotswolds.org.uk so that they can spread the word.

Aside from the events themselves, one important thing to remember is that the fringe and the other events are run by volunteers. Running them is a huge personal undertaking for those who put their time aside, so I’d like to thank the organisers of all the aforementioned and other events for giving up their days and nights to plan and run them – without them, they just wouldn’t happen.