Excitement is building as final preparations get underway for the fifth Ilkley Live community music festival this weekend, an event that is now a favourite fixture on the town’s community calendar.
This Friday and Saturday will see over 100 live performances across over 20 venues around the town, with music on offer to suit every musical taste.
[Finishers at the Ticket Office Bar]
The festival kicks off on Friday at midday with solo acoustic blues at the bandstand. From there, audiences can wander through the town, sampling jazz, folk, rock n roll, klezmer, classical, indie, blues, pop, country, as well as DJ sets and the spoken word, with performances continuing late into the evening, and again on Saturday.
Some of the performances are staged in people’s homes and gardens, while others can be found in popular commercial venues, including Martinez, the Ilkley Tap, the Flying Duck, Riverside, the Yard, the Manor House courtyard, Tinker Gallery, Alpkit and the Ticket Office.
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[Alison and Angela playing at Ilkley Live]
The festival is completely free to attend and people can build their own programme by going to the website, Ilkleylive.com. The performers are part of the local community and are not paid - all donations are put towards funding the festival in future years.
As the festival’s founder, Dan Hammond, says:
“The purpose of Ilkley Live is to unite the community through the joy of live music. It is run like a charity with trustees and proper governance. Our charitable objects are all about community cohesion through music. We are now registered with HMRC as a not-for-profit and we are aiming for registered charity status, we are too small at the moment.
We have big plans to support the community to have more music and so at Ilkley Live Community Music Festival 2025 we will be collecting directly for Ilkley Live from the commercial venues and from the audience. The money collected will fund the festival - including public liability insurance, Performing Rights Society fees, publicity materials etc - and also to put on and underwrite a number of events through the year. This means that we can all get together to hear more music and performers and venues can be paid for the work that that they do.”
For the full programme of performers and venues at this year’s Ilkley Live Community Festival please visit the website: Ilkleylive.com
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