A New Dawn for Nottingham: Celebrating the Birth of a Festival and An Arts Council England Award

2020 is a year of both challenges and triumphs, and amid the global uncertainty, Nottingham is witnessing the birth of something truly remarkable—a new festival project dedicated to creativity, community, and cultural celebration. Nottingham Global Roots Festival is making its debut in the vibrant cultural landscape of Nottingham, and in its first year, has also earned an award from Arts Council England!

Such a great name too! Thanks to Joe for creating this project name.

Thanks to LW Arts CIC (formerly The Liz Winwood Foundation) for being awarded a grant from Arts Council England, we are able to work alongside Cultural Vibrations based in Nottingham to deliver the first Nottingham Global Roots Festival project events and outreach workshop programme, kindly supported by The National Lottery Community Fund and a pool of talented creative practitioners in Nottingham.

A great new logo for Nottingham Global Roots Festival, designed by the clever people at Ovy Design 

With the arrival of Covid-19 in early 2020, we were able to take our festival online. This allowed us to invite a whole range of fantastic artists, bands and workshop leaders to take part in our digital celebration events. We welcomed many more followers and lovers of global music onto our digital platforms throughout 2020, as a result of curating engaging and interesting festival events.

Just below is a clip from Swedish/Senegalese duo Sousou & Maher Cissoko’s performance at our ‘weekender’ festival in October 2020.

Throughout 2020, we also welcomed stunning artists, such as Sefo Kanuteh (Kora - The Gambia), Muha (Ukrainian/Russian folk), Kairi Kaiso (Calypso - Trinidad & Tobago), Lindigo (Maloya - Reunion Island) and Mendi Mohinder Singh (Tabla - India) and DJ Selector Belly.

To enjoy past performances, visit our YouTube channel.