The ‘Punk Festival Weekender’ took place from 18-20th August 2023, coinciding with the last few weeks of the hugely successful Punk: Rage & Revolution exhibition. The festival animated Leicester, attracted 1000s of people who enjoyed the events, visited the exhibition and helped to boost the local economy with increased income for shops, bars, restaurants and hotels.
Venues, creative organisations and retail outlets across the city joined in curating events across multiple music and arts venues, with a big open air music festival day on Leicester’s Jubilee Square on Saturday 19th August as the highlight. This included free live music with bands, talks, films, dance, street food and a record fair. The weekend concluded with a punk all-dayer at Leicester’s 02 arena with iconic punk bands headlining, alongside a second stage hosting the best of Leicester punk bands.
Social Gallery is all about bringing people together and keeping those connections alive, so alongside Soft Touch Arts we brought back the popular Scooterama event and involved the Mods and scooter clubs we’d met from 2019, with the first part of the day dedicated to them. This was followed by Punkorama featuring music from the best of Leicester ska and punk bands and DJs. The sun shone, and 3500 people attended film, music, dance and arts events over the weekend.
A range of vintage and charity shops, and John Lewis created punk inspired windows. They enjoyed taking part and the charity shops boosted their sales. Firebug and Duffy’s bar promoted their own punk nights over the punk festival weekend and reported full-house audiences on each of the Friday and Saturday nights of the weekend. Other venues, such as Showcase Cinema, Phoenix, Leicester Museum & Art Gallery put on films, talks and other activities and reported high audience attendance.
The festival closed with a fantastic punk all-dayer in partnership with Leicester’s 02 venue. Featuring original, iconic punk bands including The Buzzocks and The UK Subs, plus a host of brilliant Leicester punk bands.
The Punk Festival Weekender, much like the 2019 Revive Festival, helped to boost the local economy with local businesses reporting increased takings. Leicester had turned punk for the weekend, and once again the team had helped to animate the city.
