Thank You From Handmade, Here Comes White Noise Christmas
Well, that was pretty special…
We’ll admit that this time last week all we could look forward to was everything being over. Handmade is a massive undertaking for a very small team of people and sometimes it’s all a little overwhelming. That said, it all goes out the window on Friday once the doors are open and we’re actually able to see the fruit of that labour birthed in to existence. Once it’s real it’s the most fun we can imagine. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
So what’s next? Well, we’ve already started thinking about Handmade 2016, and at this point we’re pretty confident that it will happen. We’ll fill you in on that in the coming months. BUT FIRST…
The genesis of Handmade was in a little local festival called White Noise Christmas. Curated by Maybeshewill and the much missed Death of London it was a celebration of all things great from Leicester, with all proceeds going to charity. We’ve decided that now Handmade is established as it’s own entity, and because we miss the venue-to-venue nature of our old city centre festival, it’s about time we bought it back in a new and re-imagined form. White Noise Christmas 2015 will take place on Friday 4th and Saturday 5th of December at Firebug, The Cookie and other locations to be revealed between now and then. It will include the best of Leicester’s musical exports and some incredible national talent. Early Bird tickets are on sale now for just £10. Once expenses are covered we’ll donate the profit to local charities, as we always did in it’s past incarnations.
So, with the road map for the next 12 months in place
We have a lot of thank yous to express right now. Firstly to Matt Kirk from Firebug for pulling the Cave, Alumni room and Cinema together and to Nik Sharpe and Tinny from The Cookie for loaning us an inordinate amount of equipment and for their significant contribution to the line-up. Andy Wright also deserves high praise and our eternal gratitude for his enormous contribution. We firmly believe that between the three of us we managed to put together a line-up any festival would be proud of, and we loved every minute of doing it.
Our curatorial team - Alexzander Jackson, Heather Forknell, David Wilson Clarke, Fraser West, Holly Pickersgill and Tetrad put together some awesome Art, Film, Photography and Performance and we feel like their contribution really made Handmade feel like a ‘festival’ this year. It wouldn’t have been the same without them.
Although we know it was contentious at the time, we really feel like the move to Leicester O2 Academy was the right thing to do for the festival - having everything so close together and under one roof made it feel like much more of an ‘event’ and a decidedly more social affair. Huge thanks to Tom, Rob and the Academy technical crew for unfaltering patience and hard work over the weekend. You are by no means the faceless, soulless corporation we once imagined you to be. We also need to extend particular thanks to Matt Daly for wrangling fifty tech riders and making sure we were all prepared for the bands to arrive. Everything worked exactly as we imagined it would
Most importantly, The Handmade 2015 volunteers completely outdid themselves, even being described as ‘Devastatingly Efficient’ by one tour manager, and we completely agree with him. Liam, Steve, Cerys, Stefanie, Joem, Tommy, Priya, Jess, Millie, Laura, Rich and Fraser were mindblowingly hard working, and totally ‘on it’ from midday Friday until 4am Sunday. You owe the festival to them, really.
Finally, thank you to you guys for turning out and supporting what we believe is slowly but surely becoming a significant event in Leicester’s cultural calendar - and making waves on a national scale. You’re why the festival can exist in the first place.
So that’s another year done and dusted. 12 months can’t pass fast enough.
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