This weekend saw the highlight of the Highworth calendar so far! WrdeUp is Highworth answer to Glastonbury and it didn’t disappoint…
This year saw the event turning five, with the event getting bigger and better every year. The event was born in 2013 as just an event to celebrate the Highworth Town Junior Football Club winning the South West Community Club of The Year.
The event headline act that year were a Take That tribute band. In 2014 a new festival took place called ‘Highworts’ after the success of the HTFC event the previous year, this time with Kingsland Road from X-Factor headlining.
In 2015, the event rebranded to WrdeUp, and so the event was set in stone in the Highworth events calendar.
This year saw an awesome line up, including The Parsons, a local folk duo, Spidasense, Highworth’s very own metalsoul band, local Swindon student band, Pik’N’Mix, Promise Land, Mixtape, 13yr old Commonweal School student Lewis Blissett who has performed on ITVs The Voice Kids UK 2017 and is now part of Team Pixie, Boogie Me, Bleep Machines, Felix & The Funk and finally headlining WrdeUp was Los Palmas 6, the official Madness Tribute Band who’s sax player actually played sac for Madness for six years.
As well as the music, there was other great entertainment for the family, with magic shows, face painting, a Dance Zone, Circus performers and much more. There was also a great selection of great food and drink available from a BBQ provided by Andrews Butchers, pizzas from Highworth Pizzaria and a licensed bar by local Brewery Arkells.
The highlights of the event had to be performances by Spidersense, Felix & The Funk and of course the headliner Los Palmas 6, and not forgetting Lewis Blissett who even had his own groupies from screaming teenage girls to mums and grans, a young lad that could well have a promising music career ahead of him, so keep watching ITVs The Voice Kids.
The event saw the sale of a staggering 650 tickets before the event and over 1600 tickets sold in total. WrdeUp is now a registered CIC company and are inviting local Highworth community groups and charities to apply for donations on the website www.wrdeup.org.uk.
Each year the event keeps getting bigger and better, and the committee behind the event are already thinking about how they can improve and make 2018 even bigger, asking the festival goers if they would like camping, which from the response was a very big yes!
To keep up with WrdeUp, you can find them on Facebook and Twitter, along with links to all the bands that took part.
By Mike Buss
