After an incredible debut in 2013, we are very excited to announce that Handmade Festival will be returning to Leicester in 2014, taking place on May bank holiday weekend from Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th May.

We’ll be making our first line-up announcements really soon, but we wanted to let you know the dates and some of the awesome people we’ll be working with on next year’s event.

Limited early bird tickets go on sale at 7pm on Saturday 7th December 2013 from SeeTickets and the Handmade Festival website.

BUY EARLY BIRD TICKETS HERE

2013’s event saw the likes of Dutch Uncles, Rolo Tomassi, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Nine Black Alps, The Twilight Sad and Sam Duckworth of Get Cape Wear Cape Fly fame join countless other nationally and internationally recognised artists alongside Leicester’s impressive local talent for three days of music, comedy, art, film and photography events at venues throughout the Old Town Quarter of the city. We took over venues, galleries, churches and even a castle to fill the city with art, and in 2014 we plan to do more of the same - but even bigger and better.

A big part of Handmade next year will be working with some of the festivals, record labels and promoters that we love from Leicester and around the UK. We’re very excited to announce the following curators for the coming festival

2000Trees vs. ArcTanGent

Handmade’s collective favourite outdoor festivals have teamed up to create the line-up for one of our stages, picking artists that have performed at their festivals over the years. 2000Trees bagged the best Grass Roots Festival award again at this years Festival awards and has seen sets from Frank Turner, The Subways, Frightened Rabbit, The Futureheads, British Sea Power, Wild Beasts and Metronomy during it’s history. ArcTanGent launched this year to universally ecstatic acclaim, headlined by 65daysofstatic and Fuck Buttons and crammed to the rafters with exceptional music. We can’t think of people we’d trust more with one of our stages.

Big Scary Monsters Vs. Alcopop

Two of britain’s best indie labels, winners of countless awards including Best Small Label at the AIM Music Awards for Alcopop this year and between them home to releases from some incredible acts. Get Cape Wear Cape Fly and Pulled Apart By Horses cut their teeth on BSM whilst Andrew WK, Cursive, Minus the Bear, Tall Ships, Toe and many more currently call the label home. Alcopop on the other hand is home to My First Tooth, Johnny Foreigner and Katie Malco who all impressed at the last Handmade. We can’t wait to see who they pick in 2014.

There are more awesome music curators to come, as well as plenty of musicians hand picked by us. Importantly, It’s not just about music - we’ll be bringing you more comedy, art, film and photography than you can possibly take in in our one short weekend, and we’ll have news of who’ll be taking care of that side of things really, really soon.