In pictures: Original Culture Festival makes Bedford proud

This year’s festival at Priory Park took a step further by adding a family Soulful Sessions Sunday and showed the power of inclusivity and unity in Bedford.

The Original Culture Festival took place on August 17 and 18, including an adults-only event on Saturday featuring music from reggae to garage, house to RnB, jungle to hip hop, and a family friendly event on Sunday.

Saturday saw a line up of incredible local DJs and performers, local and out-of-town sound systems, Bedford's own DJ Spoony, members of the So Solid Crew, Reggae artist Dawn Penn & UK Rap star Mostack.

The Sunday festival called ‘the Soulful Sessions ‘ played host to a number of local and headlining artistes, bands, DJs and Performers on two stages including Sophia Soul, Funk Odyssey, Donna Samuels, FightClub and Clayton Stevens amongst those performing and headlining acts Omar, Jazzie B

Both days were a massive success, The Soulful sessions Sunday event was described as a tribute to Bedford people – many described it as having an amazing vibe, with lots of friendliness, fun, dancing and singing.

Held at Priory Marina, the event was originally organised three years ago by Rowan Forrester – aka Rhino Selekta – a DJ and promoter who died from Covid just two weeks before the first festival took place in August 2021.

After losing him, his family and friends decided to push ahead with the event, as it was something he had dreamed of for many years. The first event took place at the Sharnbrook Hotel and was a beautiful tribute to a very well-loved man.

His fiancée Fiona Connolly took over his directorship and decided with Rowan's good friend Josie Mule to continue the festival as a tribute to him.

The pair applied for a licence at Priory Country Park, which became the new home for Original Culture Festival.

The ladies joined forces with Concept Event Solutions, a local company that had supplied the infrastructure for the first event. Haydn Hammond, director of Concept, saw the vision they had and became very passionate about the tribute to Rowan – and together they have worked tirelessly to bring the festival to life.

After OCF2021 and Rowan's funeral, the ladies and Haydn went straight into planning the 2022 event. This was the first event to take place at Priory Country Park and was a one day event planned around the anniversary of losing Rowan.

The event was a huge success – but they decided take it a step further. While breaking down the festival in 2022 they discussed how they envisioned the second day of the next event. They decided on a soulful relaxed day for the whole family, reminiscent of the amazing Lazy Sunday event that used to take place in Bedford.

After taking time out in 2023 to deal with their grief, the ladies and Haydn started planning again.

They stated that they cannot wait to build Original Culture Festival up to be an event Bedford can be proud of, in loving memory of a great man. Many would say they achieved that this weekend.

Credit to Haydn Hammond of Concept Events as the organiser and promoter of the Sunday soulful sessions and providing the infrastructure and Leon Thompson from Onyxx events as music Director, with Fiona Connolly and Josie Mule were organisers of The Bedford Original Festival.