Lindfield Arts Festival celebrates its ninth year

West Sussex culture fans braved the wind and rain to enjoy this year’s Lindfield Arts Festival.

The festival, which aims to celebrate creativity, featured a trail of 20 scarecrows placed around the village. This was organised by Lindfield in Bloom and created by local clubs such as 1st Lindfield Scout Group.

A delicious display of cakes could be seen in the Toll House where Michelle Wibowo, a former star of Channel 4’s Extreme Cake Makers, showcased her life-sized tree titled ‘My Lindfield’.

Lynn Tulip, co-project manager of Lindfield Arts Festival, explained how the festival differs from previous years.

“This is the ninth year and we seem to be getting bigger and bigger each year. There are a great variety of plain art, performances and people offering different workshops,” she said.

The live spray painting exhibition boasted a rainbow of colours with children and parents bonding over quirky creations.

Sarah Gillings, an inclusive arts practitioner from Newick, stated the importance of her workshop: “Culture is really important for these areas because that it one of the first things to be lost. There have been studies showing that lack of culture is related to poverty.”

She added: “The idea is to introduce spray painting not as a subversive thing to vandalise, but as something to beautify spaces to get young people involved.”

Lynn concluded on the success of the festival and said: “Despite the awful inclement weather and the necessity to move events to different locations, all the venues were full and performers delighted with the audience numbers.”

Hilary Knight, co-project manager, added: “The village was rocking till late on Sunday night. Roll on the tenth anniversary.”