All day they poured in. Waves and waves of happy punters, and I’m not just talking about the four wheel drives and funky fast cars packing the car parks at CarFest South over August Bank holiday.
CarFest, the brilliant festival of cars, music, foods and masses of family fun dreamed up by TV superstar Chris Evans was sprinkled with Rock the Cotswolds sparkle this year when we were invited to host a brand new ‘Summer School’ at CarFest South, and hundreds of kids (and their parents), couldn’t keep away.
Over the last few months, our own Rock the Cotswolds’ Melissa (the best event di’rock’ter in the business) has been offering some of our favourite rockers the opportunity to strut their stuff in front of the most demanding audiences of all… kids.
‘What I learned this summer’, offered kids of all ages the opportunity to learn circus skills, release their inner Banksy and Picasso, aspire to be engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, magician Paul Daniels (but with the charm of Tommy Cooper!) or scientist Sir Isaac Newton.
And it was all thanks to Forest of Dean-based Engage Circus, artist and designer Betsy Benn (from Chipping Campden), KB Morgan (Cheltenham), New Brewery Arts (Cirencester), Harry & Jack’s (Cheltenham), Renishaw (Wootton Under Edge) who brought the world’s first 3-D bike, magician Alex Robertson (Cirencester) and the not-so-mad scientists at SnowBusiness (Stroud).
Like the true Rockers they are, all of them gave up their Bank Holiday weekend to showcase the cool, clever and creative people and businesses that pack out the Cotswolds, to hundreds of kids and their parents who descended on the Rock the Cotswolds’ Summer School tent.
Formula 1 cars may have been burning rubber around the CarFest race track just yards away from our tent, or driving sideways ‘two wheels only’ to impress the thronged petrol-heads, but nothing turned heads in our tent as much as Renishaw’s amazing 3D printed bike, was more absorbing than making your own motors from … toothbrushes, or was as much fun as a full-on snowball fight (having made your own fake snowballs, natch) in the middle of summer, thanks to Hollywood regular SnowBusiness’s incredibly realistic fake snow.
Stilt-walking, hula hooping and spinning plates: Engage Circus inspired kids to do things they’d only dreamed of that morning, while colour burst across posters, plates and backpacks thanks to our talented artists and designers.
There might have been loads of track action at CarFest south 2015, but thanks to our wonderful team of Rockers, the action in the Rock the Cotswolds tent is likely to be remembered for much longer by the CarFest kids.
Posted by Nicky Godding
