Welcome to Aberdour Festival 2023
This year, Aberdour is celebrating the 900th anniversary of St Fillan’s Church, probably the oldest church in Scotland! To join in with these celebrations, we have chosen the theme for Aberdour Festival 2023 to be ‘900 years of Aberdour.’ The festival is a celebration of our amazing community!
It is because of the generosity of our community, in terms of time, energy, commitment, enthusiasm, as well as skills and expertise, that this village is able to put together such an amazing 10-day event. We thank everybody involved for all they do!
This year, the festival will be bringing a programme packed with music, talks, sport, dance, literature and the visual arts. We sincerely hope that you will find there is something for everyone. Best of all, the Festival Marquee is back!
This year’s theme is ‘900 Years of Aberdour’.
Aberdour is an amazing place to live, both in terms of the physical landscape with our beautiful beaches, potentially linked by a wonderful new bridge and walks along the Fife Coastal Path, our history – including the beautiful Aberdour Castle and of course, St Fillan’s church which has been a place of worship for 900 years, and the people who work together to make our amazing community. During the week we will have opportunities to learn more about the history of Aberdour with Arthur Lloyd. Look out for his talk and he will even take you on a walk around the village so you can see for yourself at first hand many of the points of historical interest. It would have been Medieval times 900 years ago, so our theme for the Scarecrow competition, Family Games Night and, indeed, this year’s parade will be Medieval times! Knights, fair maidens, jesters, dragons and lots more! We can’t wait to see what you dress up as!
The Festival Royal Party, Parade and Crowning
We are delighted to announce that this year’s Aberdour Festival Royal Party are Edie Riach, the Festival Queen, with her attendants, Leah Marshall and Martha Diamond, and Festival King Michaelis Diasakos, with his attendants Calan Wilson and Logan Reid. You may notice that our Royal Party has grown this year! This is to celebrate the fact that this will be Lynn McGonagall’s final year as the Royal Party escort. She has done an incredible job for many many years and we thank her for the wonderful job she has done! We know that the Royal Party will have a fantastic week beginning with the crowning and parade on Saturday 29th July! Another huge thank you must go to Susan and Michael Proctor. They have designed and printed the tickets for all festival events for many years and are finally retiring their printer. Join them at Aberdour Castle as they carry out the Crowning of our Royal Party and we celebrate the start of the festival! Following the crowning, the parade will move through the village to Dovecot Gates and then about turn and travel towards Hawkcraig Road and the Festival Marquee for the beginning of Gala Day and the ever-popular Family Sports! Come on Easter (and Wester of course!) Come and join the fabulously colourful crowd and if you wish, dress up as a Medieval character! Perhaps a Knight or a dragon! Maybe a jester or something else!
Tickets
Children’s Ticket Day – Saturday 24th June 9.00am – 11.30am
From Monday 26th June – Thursday 27th July Tickets for Evening and Adult events will be available at Aberdour Bistro and Children’s tickets from The Purple Shop. Drop your kids off at school and pop round to The Purple Shop to get your children’s tickets! Tickets will also be available online.
From Friday 28th July onwards, any remaining tickets will be available from the Box Office at the Festival Marquee.
We thank you all once again for your support and encouragement and we look forward to seeing you during the festival.
Helen Pearson, Chairperson, and the Festival Committee, 2023