About Us...

The Festival History

The Annual Belle Vue Arts Festival is the brain child of Judy Townsend, former teacher and Mayoress of Shrewsbury, who along with the hard work of friends and local artists managed to create an inspiring week of community arts events in 2003.

Now, several years later the festival continues through the efforts of a small group of committed volunteers and a wider network of well wishers.

The festival 

Over the years, the Belle Vue Arts Festival has widened its scope to include most of the visual arts, but our main aims are the following:

 1/ To give gallery and performing space to local artists.
 2/ To stage high quality performances and exhibitions.
 3/ To organise art workshops and competitions.
 4/ To support the local community and its institutions/organisations*.
 5/ To encourage participation of all members of the Belle Vue Community.
 6/ To provide cheap (or free!) events that enrich community life.

*The English Bridge Workshop, Coleham Primary School, Wakeman Performing Arts School and the Belle Vue Youth Club.

All this activity needs to be financed, and although we have been fortunate to obtain grants from the local authority on occasion, we rely heavily on local fundraising to keep the festival self sustaining on what still is a minimal budget.

In recent years this has been helped greatly by the income from the ‘Garden and Scarecrow Trail’ event in the Spring. This has been a tremendous success and is a credit to the continued financial, practical and artistic support from local businesses and individuals.

Finally, we are also extremely grateful to the local churches and other organisations, such as those listed above, for allowing us to use their facilities.

Thank you Belle Vue!