The Keswick Mountain Festival, which has been held in May for the last three years, has been getting bigger and better each year. Throughout its history the festival has been run by a very dedicated team of local volunteers and for the last two years they have employed a project manager. This arrangement had needed lots of people in Keswick to give up a lot of their own time to keep the festival running but it has also meant that as activity providers we have been able to have a say in many of the decisions that have been made and felt that we could help to shape the festival into something we really wanted to be a part of.
Keswick Tourism Association, who started the festival, have taken the decision to sell it to a project management company based in the South Lakes called Bluestone Events. We have not heard anything from them yet so do not know how this will affect the festival in the future.
We volunteered some time in the run up to the festival last year and enjoyed becoming more involved but I am not sure we will be so keen to do so if we think the profits are heading to a company outside of Keswick.