Compton Festival - A new village festival in the heart of the SouthDowns

The idea for the Compton Festival was born, like many good ideas, over a pint in the local village pub. Looking for ways to make more use of the village Recreation Field, a few of the locals led by locals Greg Choppen, Andrew Simmans and Luke Albery, came up with the idea of their own festival.

The idea quickly gathered momentum, and before long (having obtained the approval of the Parish Council) a small team of villagers were working hard on creating what will be a fantastic day out for young and old alike.

From the start, the group felt that as well as great music and food, they wanted to showcase local tradition beers, and crafts. Much research was done on the beers – with a number of tasting sessions (checkout the reels on social media for more details  ) resulting in a list of six local breweries being selected as the craft beer providers for Compton Festival.

The Crafts also involved a lot of research but fortunately the South Downs are home to a wide range of talented craftspeople from woodturners, to potters, weavers and blacksmiths and so the team are particularly excited on the final list of craftspeople who will be attending on the day, to both demonstrate their talents, but also to allow festival goers to participate themselves. On the music side, the team had a head start - Luke Albery, a local villager, is a long-time musician and recording artist with lots of contacts within the industry.

Thus, he was able to build a line-up of artists varying from a 1980s legends, to funk, pop, emerging new talent, and event some pirates (check out the website for details!). Last but not least was the food and fortunately the village pub owners Alastair and Keira stepped up to take on all of the food and are providing a wide range of tasty food for hungry festival goers, including their own specially created and local sourced Compton Festival Burger!

With the ingredients of the Festival sorted, the focus then turned to spreading the word about the festival and this was where Greg sought the help of his two kids who between them have created all of the festival graphics (daughter Chloe) and some of the main social media videos (son Dan).

With just a few weeks remaining, the team have been able to add the final piece of the puzzle – camping. With details about to be shared on the website and Social media, festival goers will be able to camp over the weekend in a beautiful spot, overlooking the village with a short walk through beautiful countryside the festival site.

With everything in place the team are now in the final stages of planning – and have recruited a large number of willing locals to help with the running of the festival. Tickets are still available – for more details please checkout the website www.comptonfestival.co.uk