We are delighted to announce that the 11th Hanwell Hootie Music Festival will take place on Saturday May 11th 2024. In the past year we have been busy re-thinking the future of the festival while having a great year of pop up events at Hanwell Town FC, Hanwell Carnival and Ealing Broadway.
Our fundamental ethos remains the same. We want to nurture young and emerging artists, celebrate the areas rich musical heritage and create a sense of pride in our little corner of west London, putting Hanwell firmly on the musical map! We have always paid all artists a good fee whilst keeping the festival free to attend and we are continuing with these core values!
Since our inception in 2013 we have been entirely volunteer led, run by a very small team of directors, this has always been a labour of love for us. We have poured huge amounts of our time and energy into making the festival the best it can be year on year. Eleven years on, this tiny core group of directors remain. Inevitably as our individual circumstances have changed over the years, we simply don’t have the capacity to put as much of our time and energy into running the festival. This is why the Hootie this year will be slightly different to previous years.
The Hootie team will be curating and fully organising our 2 most iconic and unique venues, the Sandy Park stage and St Mellitus Church both opening earlier than previous years, we will also have the youth stage. (No Viaduct Meadow this year). Oh and who remembers the Busking Bus? Well, we are very excited that we have a replacement – the Busking Boat! (More details to follow).
We are lucky to have so many fantastic pubs and venues in Hanwell that we have curated at all previous Hootie’s. However, this year, the pubs will be curating their own music with some support from the Hootie team. They will be part of the ‘Hootie day’ but will be acting independently. Our aim here it to foster the legacy of the Hootie day experience and keeping it as inclusive as we can.
But how do bands apply to play you may be asking! We will be opening an application process shortly where bands can submit all their music and details for consideration. Full details of this will be posted on our socials in the coming days. We encourage all artists who have sent in emails already to re-apply via this process! Applications will be open for a limited time. Any artists not selected for the main Hootie venues will have the opportunity to also apply to the pub venues for consideration. Opting into this process will also allow artists to apply for other festivals in the UK with a few clicks. We want to hear from you!! Don’t be shy.
We are very happy to be back and encourage anyone who wants to be part of this year’s festival to reach out to our volunteer’s team on volunteers@hanwellhootie.co.uk
Source: https://www.hanwellhootie.co.uk/