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We're proud to support the Bolton Food and Drink Festival, 25 to 28 August 2023

We're proud to support the Bolton Food and Drink Festival, 25 to 28 August 2023

If you’re looking to make plans for later this month, why not check out the award-winning Bolton Food and Drink Festival? We're supporting it again this year and it’ll happen during the August Bank Holiday weekend, 25 to 28 August.

You can expect:

  • a diverse blend of food, drink, and arts/crafts stalls,
  • celebrity chef demos- with James Martin, Nisha Katona, and Gok Wan appearing this year,
  • two fantastic music stages (with daily headline acts and local musical talent),
  • free children’s activities,
  • and world-class street entertainment.

What we love about the festival (now in its 18th year) is that it showcases the town’s vibrancy and the skill of our local producers, growers, bakers, brewers, chefs, and home-kitchen cooks.

Most importantly, it brings communities together. Food and drink unite us and it’s great to see people appreciating the cuisine of different countries and cultures as one. These are just a couple of the reasons we’ll be supporting the festival again this year.

We’ve donated one of our stall spaces at the festival to Backup North West (backup-charity.org.uk), who’ll be using their coffee van (pictured below with the charity's CEO, Maura Jackson) to raise funds for their housing and support services for homeless young people in Bolton.

Through their passionate staff, the Backup team provides a safe and stable place for young people to develop their confidence and life skills, enabling independence.

And thanks to our friends from Proper Good Bolton, we've also been able to link up with and donate our second stall space to HMPasties Ltd, who'll be showcasing great food and championing great social enterprise (learn more about social enterprise at the bottom of this article**).

Started in 2018, HMPasties' purpose is to “bring out the good inside” by creating sustainable employment for people with criminal convictions. Read the story of the business and its founder, Lee Wakeham (pictured) at: hmpasties.com/about-us.

Please support them during the festival if you can. Thank you.

Maura Jackson from Backup North West Lee Wakeham from HM Pasties

**A bit about social enterprise:

Like other businesses, social enterprises seek to make a profit and succeed commercially- but how they operate, who they employ, how they use their profits, and where they work transforms lives and communities.

A regional programme called ‘Proper Good’ offers free-to-access business support, networking, and training led by entrepreneurs who know how to run social enterprises that do good in their communities. Individuals on the programme can also apply for social investment to grow their businesses and scale their impact.

So, if you have a ‘Proper Good’ idea or business that aims to make a positive difference in Bolton, visit the Proper Good Bolton website (www.gmcvo.org.uk/ProperGood) to learn more about the support available through the programme (it's designed to help no matter what stage of the business journey you’re on – from start-up to scale-up).

BTW: our subsidiary Starts with you Bolton is a social enterprise. It offers a range of People and Property Services to business and the public, which you can learn more about here: www.startswithyou.org.uk.

Starts with you’s Managing Director, Hayley Hulme (pictured, right), is Chair of the Bolton Steering Group for Proper Good.

Hayley Hulme (right) is Chair of the Bolton Steering Group for Proper Good.