Major volunteer-run food festival gets underway
The Nantwich Food Festival is underway in Cheshire, drawing an estimated 40,000 visitors to the town for a three-day celebration of food and drink. The event is managed by volunteers and features celebrity chefs, though organizers highlight the growing financial and logistical challenges of maintaining a free-to-enter model.
Why it matters
This highlights the tension between maintaining accessible community cultural events and the increasing economic pressures on volunteer-led organizations.
Director Nanna Pedley (centre) with some of the other volunteers who help run Nantwich Food Festival [Nantwich Events Photography] One of the UK's largest free-to-enter food festivals gets underway on Friday.
Nantwich Food Festival in Nantwich, Cheshire, is staged across three days in the town centre, attracting an estimated 40,000 visitors, and is run entirely by volunteers.
"There is just such an amazing atmosphere in town, so many people having a good time," said Nanna Pedley, one of the festival's directors, who like the other 100 volunteers, "love Nantwich and love food and drink."
Celebrity cooks attending this year's event include Lisa Faulkner, Jon Watts and Nigel Brown, with a number of local chefs also staging cooking demonstrations.
The free-to-enter event attracts thousands of people to Nantwich [Nantwich Events Photography]
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