Good Green Family Fun Returns to Blackburn

Blackburn’s Business Improvement District is gearing up for the return of Countryside Comes to Town with a line-up of special guests and activities.

Visitors can celebrate the completion of Blackburn’s multi-million pound Cathedral Quarter where the festival main stage and big screen will host international artists, big bands and well-known personalities on Saturday, 25 June between 10am-6pm.

Mr Bloom from CBeebies will be returning to the nature themed event for the second year running with his band to perform a brand new musical show on stage between 3pm-3.45pm.

The event programme features a variety of theatre, craft workshops, music, dance, live animals and insects including a creepy crawly roadshow, a world famous collection of Bowdler’s beetles and a mobile petting farm. The line-up also includes a diverse mix of music performed by street artists across the town centre and a showcase of local talent presented by MMT and Reidys.

Special guest and winner of the Great British Bake Off, Nadiya Hussain, will be meeting and greeting visitors signing copies of her new book in a ‘Tea Tent’ situated on Cathedral Gardens between 2pm-3pm.

Other attractions joining the line-up this year include an insect museum, a bucking bronco sheep and a performance-hairdressing show by Barcelona based company Osadia.

Manager of the Blackburn BID, Harriet Roberts, said:

The programme has doubled in size. Countryside Comes to Town is one of our biggest events and promises to be packed with fun, food and fabulous entertainment. Last year the event attracted over 76,000 people to Blackburn and we are hoping for a good turnout again this year.”

Town centre festivities will continue into the evening with a concert featuring music of the sixteenth and seventeenth century by I Fagiolini at the Blackburn Cathedral Flower Festival, which runs from 23-26 June.

Karen Brooke, an organiser of the Flower Festival, said:

It’s so exciting that Countryside Comes to Town will be taking place around the Cathedral during the Flower Festival. Blackburn is definitely going to be the place to be this June.”

For more information or to download a copy of the 2016 programme visit www.blackburnbid.co.uk