A day-long music festival featuring live eight bands and accompanied by fairground rides and pop-up bars will get under way this summer in celebration of a County Durham town's milestone anniversary.
Newton Aycliffe is to host the outdoor festival Ayclive - its first ever live event - on July 29 which will mark the town's 75-year anniversary. The festival has been almost two years in the planning, with its organisers Ayclive Events, which includes the team behind Shildon Live music festival, having postponed its initial hopes to host it last summer.
Now its delayed debut is promising much to celebrate and there are hopes to make it an annual event. While last year saw a new song, Shipyards, recorded by The Lake Poets' Martin Longstaff - along with local students and an adult choir - to mark the 75-year anniversary of the founding of Newton Aycliffe under the New Towns Act, Ayclive Events says it was 75 years ago this year, in 1948,- when the first sod was cut and the first tenants moved in.
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To turn the spotlight on the town, a festival site will be established on the Oak Leaf Sports Complex field, near the town centre in School Aycliffe Lane, and throughout the day festival-goers will be able to enjoy a range of music there, headlined by two nineties bands. Taking to the stage will be indie rockers The Cast - which emerged in Liverpool during the nineties Britpop movement and followed up its top-selling debut album All Change with hits including Sandstorm and Flying - and Dodgy, the Hounslow foursome best known for hit single Good Enough.
Also on the line-up of the festival, which will run on the day from noon until 11pm, will be local classic pop group Another Crisis; eighties band The Breakfast Club; seventies favourites Sleeze Sisters; Ska Boom; Northern Soul Elite and rockers Sound Divide. The show field will also host bars, refreshments, concession stands and fairground rides.
Early bird tickets are now available online, costing £15 (£8 for 14 to 17-year-olds) until February 28. The price from then will be £20 and £15. A £1 booking fee will apply.
Children aged 14 will be able to attend the festival for free when accompanied by a paying adult. To book see here.
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