Introducing ‘Little Fishes’ New for 2024!
For our youngest and most important festival goers, this year we are introducing a variety of exciting and fun fishy activities beneath the ‘fishy tree’ where you can take part in fishy games, try some simple fishy crafts, and enjoy fishy themed activities! We will have a selfy corner where you can have your photograph taken with our mermaid and we would love you all to come along to the festival in fancy dress! It doesn’t have to be a fishy or food themed costume either, you can come as Spiderman or a Princess or anything you like! The best thing about it is that you will receive a prize for coming as your favourite character! So why not grab Mum and Dad, Nan and Pops and your brothers, sisters and friends, and come on down to the festival to see what we have in store!
You’ll find us under the big fishy tree!
Note: All children must be accompanied by a parent or responsible adult aged 18yrs+ at all times.
Peter, librarian at Swanage Library will be supporting us by holding a fishy themed rhyme time session at the library on Friday 14th June, 11.00-11.30am. It would be lovely to have lots of youngsters enjoying this great learning session! Rhyme time is suitable for children aged 0 to 5 years and is a free event. You can book here
We receive some great festival support from the town, and Studio South are generously running fishy workshops over the weekend of the Fish & Food Festival, great fishy crafts for all ages at their studio in Swanage. They will provide a donation back to our chosen charities. The 30 minute session can be booked by popping into the shop, messaging on social media or via the website. The price is £4.00pp/per session.
The Swanage Fish & Food Festival would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has donated their time and resources in setting up this area, in particular Little Birds Pre-School, our great sponsors Cumulus Outdoors, our wonderful supporters Chococo and of course our volunteers who will be overseeing the newest area of the festival! Thank you all!
Get Your Dancing Shoes On!
THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT
Now we all know everyone loves a bit of glitz and glamour and the chance to strut their stuff on the dance floor, so why not join us for an evening of Modern Jive!
You don’t have to be an expert to come along as Jai and Nigel will give easy beginner lessons and then freestyle time to put your new steps into rhythm on the floor!
Tickets are £10 each and all proceeds will be put towards the running costs of the Swanage Fish & Food Festival.
Please call Adam on 07932 152639 to book your ticket now!
Friday 12th April 2024
at the Conservative Club in Swanage from 8-11pm.
Cakes, sweets and bar!
Calling All Volunteers!
We will be holding our annual Volunteers Evening on Tuesday 27th February 2024
Starting at 7pm at The Old Stables Delicatessen, we invite all of our wonderfully supportive team to join us for nibbles and a drink and to meet our new committee members. Also to learn about our new plans for the festival this year - all very exciting!
We look forward to seeing you all and, if you know of any family or friends who would be interested in helping us this year, then please invite them along too. Thank you!
Fishy Trip Across the Atlantic!
Our intrepid Treasurer, Lyn Whaley, is currently undertaking a fantastic personal challenge sailing a yacht in the ARC+ Challenge as part of the World Cruising Club’s rally across the Atlantic!
The route started in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on 5th November with the first leg terminating at Mindelo Marina, Sao Vincente, Cape Verde after a sail of approximately 6 days. Lyn’s boat, Offbeat, reached Cape Verde in overall 67th place in a total of 95 vessels, but according to class they were also 12th in Multihull A and 22nd in Multihull All. A great achievement in our book!
The next leg restarts on 17th November with the long sail across the Ocean to Port Louis Marina, Grenada. The leg can take anything from 12-17 days depending on the yacht type and obviously the sea conditions.
Lyn Whaley
Offbeat Details
Route to Cape Verde
There is a fabulous awards ceremony in Grenada on Thursday 7th December 2023 to congratulate everyone for their amazing achievements! We are looking forward to seeing Lyn back with us in December and hearing all about her adventures! We’re sure she will many stories to tell and we really do hope she is having the time of her life!
You Go Girl!!
Unfortunately we are having to postpone Saturday 21st October’s Quiz night
We will advise the new date as soon as we can. Thank you to all of you who were planning to join us, we’ll be back soon!
QUIZ NIGHT!
To kick off our first fundraising event for the 2024 festival, we are holding our fun and fishy quiz at Swanage Royal British Legion on Saturday 21st October starting at 7pm.
Dee will once again be our most capable and knowledgeable Quiz Master, guiding us through rounds of general knowledge and themed questions, interspersed with the now famous ‘making round’, Elmo’s play your cards right and stand up bingo and Caroline’s grand raffle.
At only £3.00 a person, for teams of 3-8, there will not be a better or cheaper offer for a fun night out in town! Plus Saturday Night is Steak Night at Swanage RBL so why not book yourselves in early for a delicious meal before the quiz begins?
We look forward to seeing you there to help us raise funds towards the set-up costs for the festival.
Thank you!
LOGO!
You may have noticed that we have a new logo! Yes! We do! It has one additional word and full marks to those who have spotted the word ‘Food’!
We originally started out as The Swanage Fish Festival in 2015 the the aims of promoting our beautiful town and celebrating the delicious range of produce from the waters around us.
As we’ve evolved as a festival, we’ve realised that not everyone loves fish as much as we do, so we have invited other non-fish local food and drink businesses to take up pitches to provide a greater choice of foods on offer for your delight. We have also decided that our logo should reflect this pivot to keep our branding inline with these changes and more accurately represent our festival at a glance.
So welcome to The Swanage Fish and Food Festival!
We remain intimate and quirky, we will continue to offer delicious fish and shellfish with fabulous chef demonstrations and we still raise much needed funds for our three chosen charities. But, we now have a larger offering for those who prefer something other than fish dishes to sample, and we look forward to welcoming you all to tasting these wares in June!
We would like to thank Hannah from Hubble for her assistance in updating our logo!
Sponsoring the 2024 Swanage Fish Festival
Swanage Fish & Food Festival was original born as the Swanage Fish Festival in 2015, set up by a small group of fish loving friends with two aims: to encourage people to visit Swanage to sample our wonderful location and terrific local fish, food, drink and crafting produce plus raise very important funds for three chosen charities close to our hearts - Swanage Lifeboat, The National Coastwatch Institution and The Fishermen’s Mission.
We are still a small committee of hard working volunteers who love to see fabulous local and sustainable businesses delivering their top notch produce to all of our visitors. The festival is free to all and we welcome everyone wishing to sample the tasty food and drink on offer, listen to the varied entertainment, watch the incredibly skilled and informative kitchen demos and just relax in the gorgeous surroundings of Swanage Bay.
We donate all funds raised from the weekend to the 3 charities, after covering our festival running costs. We are self-funded and work hard in the months before festival raising funds to cover these costs and we thank everyone who has supported our previous fishy quizzes and other fund-raising events.
There are now opportunities for local businesses to sponsor and advertise themselves during the festival to everyone who attends; in 2019 we had 10k visitors over 2 days! So if you could consider becoming a SFF sponsor then please get in contact. This year we have 2 sponsorship packages; either a £250.00 package or a picnic bench for £30.00 to advertise your business to those enjoying the ambience of the day. Details of the £250.00 package can be found on our sponsors page. However, we understand times are tough at the moment so please talk to us about any form of sponsorship or donation you can make, after all, every little helps!
This is an amazing opportunity to promote your businesses and to support the town’s fish and food festival. We are all looking forward to a successful, enjoyable and fun-filled fish festival in June and may we thank you for your generous support.
Where it began…….
This year we are thinking of Robin Hutchinson, who, with Caroline Finch, organised the very first meeting with the idea of setting up a Fish Festival in Swanage at Prince Albert Gardens
The Reptiles Live Band have supported the Fish Festival since it founded in 2015 and Robin is their lead singer. Sadly, Robin and the Reptiles are not able to make the festival this year, but we look forward to catching up with them soon, and planning the next Fish Festival for 2024
Caroline has received a lovely message from Robin about how it all began:
It was such a lovely evening when over fifty local people and businesses gathered at Tawny’s Wine Bar to discuss creating a new festival to celebrate the wonderful Swanage Bay and its relationship to the sea and history of fishing.
Ideas flowed and enthusiasm fizzed as people grouped together to imagine what could happen at a Swanage Fish Festival.
Of course, there had been discussions in the build up to the meeting with key individuals and organisations, such as the Swanage Chamber Trade and Commerce, but this was the real test to see if the idea might float. The reaction was universally popular, great ideas emerged and so the work began to turn a dream into a reality.
As with all successful projects people emerged to offer their skills and experience, take on responsibilities and ensure the organisational backbone was there leaving the space for the more creative to be…… well, more creative.
Now as the latest Swanage Fish Festival is about to happen it is a tribute to those people who contributed on the journey and those that continue to contribute today. There is a wonderful expression, ’success has many parents and failure is an orphan’ Never is that truer than with this Festival where so many have played their part. Ann and I are proud to have played a small role in launching this ‘boat’
Long may she sail.
