Bathgate’s musical festival and family fun day, Party in the Park, will return at the end of the summer for its tenth, and potentially final, show in Kirkton Park.
The well-loved festival, first beginning in 2010, will run its tenth annual event on September 4 after missing out on two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
As always the festival will provide a variety of things for kids and adults to do in the park for free, like live music from local artists, funfair rides, animal exhibitions from Five Sisters Zoo, wood carving, community stalls, bouncy castles, and a host of other activities.
Fully-run by the same local committee on a volunteer basis over the last twelve years, the team is stepping down after one final show as funding has become harder to generate for the shrinking committee.
On average the free event costs the committee between £11-12k a year - on their worst year the collection buckets only collected £14 from the entire day.
In its twelve-year run, the event has entertained thousands of locals each year, and played host to up-and-coming Bathgate talent - such as Lewis Capaldi, who played on both the acoustic and main stage
Locals Stuart Macdonald and Jim Saunders founded the event in 2010 to bring live music back to the park and community in 2010 - inspired from their youth spent watching live acts at the bandstand in Kirkton Park.
On the music side of things, Douglas Croft of DreanoughtRock organises acts for the main stage, and local community musician Stuart McLean books acts for the acoustic stage.
Macdonald still heads the committee and is backed by the same original core team from 2010 - they hope to send off Party in the Park in a post-covid grande finale.
Chair of the committee, Stuart Macdonald said:”After the bandstand in Kirkton was demolished - there was no live music in the park for decades.
“We wanted to bring it back for the community and encourage the use of the park by locals again.
“Back when we started in 2010 it was pretty basic stuff, we built the bandstand ourselves the day before the event - but it grew gradually over the years - Boghall gala day got incorporated, so we weren’t just a music festival, but a family fun day as well.
“Douglas Croft always tried to showcase local musicians as much as he could on the main stage, and when Stuart Mclean introduced the acoustic stage seven or eight years ago he did a fantastic job of showing off young local talent.
“Lewis Capaldi even played in the park before he got established - he absolutely stunned the crowd, such a young guy with such an incredible voice - not remotely surprised at the success he’s seen.
“For the last one, every last penny we’ve got is getting thrown at the event - every year we get an enormous sense of satisfaction seeing people enjoying themselves on the day, that’s always made it worth it for me.
“Myself and the committee thought for the tenth anniversary we should put a line under it, it’s getting harder to generate funding with a shrinking committee, but there’s always hope some locals could come out of the woodwork and set up a new committee.”
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