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Drawing by Martin Rowson for The Laugharn Weekend 2020

The Laugharne Weekend is Saved

January 1, 2020

Read all about it here:

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/laugharne-weekend-saved-1193932


upstairs at the Fountain Inn

The Laugharne Weekend Needs Help!

December 20, 2019

The Arts Council of Wales has just dropped the bombshell that it will not be providing funding for next year's festival.

Every year since we first started the festival in 2007 we have received an annual grant from the Arts Council of Wales (ACW), lately at a level of £20,000 per year. That's a significant contribution to an overall budget of around £70,000. This funding has been essential to the festival, and has helped us to make it the unique,culturally rich and beautifully eccentric weekend that it is.

We cap weekend tickets at 500 each year because we want to make sure that everyone can get into the venues and to ensure the Laugharne Weekend feels like a community, not just a festival. That does put a cap on the income we can generate from tickets sales alone. Hence our dependence on the Arts Council.

As always, we've been busy organising next year's festival. We've booked acts and venues and accommodation. We've put tickets on sale and sold most of them already. And we've done this on the reasonable assumption that we would get our regular funding. But now the ACW have suddenly announced they won't be giving us any funding.* To make matters worse, they had reached this decision on November 25, but only let us know by email this Wednesday, December 18. This has left us right up against Xmas/New Year and without enough time to go to any other funding bodies. Without this money, the festival is in jeopardy.

And so we are turning to you. If you would like to help the festival go ahead next year, please donate whatever you can. Every little really does help. The Laugharne Weekend is special and we desperately want to keep it going.

Crowdfunding Here


Drawing by Martin Rowson for the Laugharne Weekend

2020 Festival

November 05, 2019

The 2020 Laugharne Weekend will take place on March 27-29 2020. Tickets will cost £100 (inc booking fee). They will go on sale on Monday Nov 18 at 9am. There will be a live link on the Tickets page of this site. There are no other authorised sellers. We will soon be announcing the first tranche of acts. Looking forward!


Richard Dawson with guitar and microphone

Urgent - Last Minute Change

January 01, 2020

Deborah Frances White has had to cancel.Really sorry about that. Richard Dawson will now be appearing in the Church at 8pm on Saturday NOT 10pm.


photo of the programme

The Final Programme!

January 01, 2020

Head over to the Line-Up Page for all the finalised info.


Photo of Tracey Thorn

Laugharne Weekend 2019 - Names Confirmed

January 18, 2019

Here's a list of fine acts for your perusal. They run the gamut from Radio 1 legend Annie Nightingale to Krautrock legend Damo Suzuki. There's guilty feminists and good immigrants, music-loving politicians and guitar playing astrophysicists. And plenty more to come!

  • Tracey Thorn
  • Annie Nightingale
  • Robin Ince
  • John Lanchester
  • John Cooper Clarke
  • Stephen Morris
  • Jackie Kay
  • Alan Johnson
  • Hollie McNish
  • Damo Suzuki
  • Jeremy Dyson
  • Luke Wright
  • Deborah Frances White
  • David Kynaston
  • Kate Hamer
  • Nikesh Shukla
  • Gwenifer Raymond
  • Carys Eleri
  • Stuart Cosgrove
  • Fiona Banner
  • Will Ashon
  • Ed Vulliamy
  • James Hawes
  • Martin Rowson
  • Charlie Connelly
  • David Stubbs & Stephen Mallinder
  • Rhys Mwyn & Alan Holmes
  • Nick Revell

Mural of Nick Priestland

Nick Priestland Memorial

December 03, 2018

There will be a memorial show for Laugharne legend the much-missed Nick Priestland of The Cors. It will take place on Monday December 3 in the Millennium Memorial Hall. The show will feature Dr John Cooper Clarke, Martin Rowson, Carys Eleri and more, all paying tribute to their departed compadre. Ticket cost £15 (plus £1 booking fee per order).


upstairs at the Fountain Inn

Laugharne Weekend Dates 2019

September 21, 2018

Next year’s Laugharne Weekend will take place on April 5-7

Accommodation options include the St Clears Travelodge which is currently charging around £110 per room for all three nights of the weekend. A 4 berth caravan in Pendine will be about £250. You can even camp in Laugharne at Big Barn Camping http://www.bigbarncamping.co.uk/ Pob lwc!

Shuttle buses will go to St Clears and Pendine until the early hours of the morning

All the hotels in Laugharne itself are full so please do not phone them

Tickets for the festival will go on sale in early November...


Euros Childs

Programme and Festival Essentials PDF

April 03, 2018

Click on the picture of Euros Childs to view or download a PDF with the up-to-date programme plus shuttle bus times etc


Photo of clouds reflected from water on a beech

Camarthenshire

January 01, 2020

From our friends at Carmarthenshire Council

“Dim ond pythefnos i fynd tan Benwythnos Talacharn! Dyma rai o’r golygfeydd hyfryd o’r arfordir y gallwch ddisgwyl eu gweld yn y digwyddiad. @darganfodsirgar #GwladGwlad @Optimwm”

|

“Laugharne Weekend is just two weeks away! Here are some of the beautiful coastal sights that you can expect to see at the event. @discovercarmarthenshire #FindYourEpic @Optimwm”

https://vimeo.com/259113773/0a58abc9f2"


man with guitar

Youtube Playlist

January 01, 2020

Here's a selection of music from acts appearing at this year's festival. Just click on Jah Wobble's nose.


two people talking

A Selection of confirmed Acts for 2018

January 01, 2020

Amongst the acts we have confirmed for this year's festival are

  • Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita (photo (c) Andy Morgan)
  • Adam Kay
  • Mike Brearley
  • Peggy Seeger
  • David Soul
  • Sophie Scott
  • Simon Day
  • Chris Difford
  • Francesca Martinez
  • Mick Herron
  • Cosey Fanni Tutti
  • Joe Dunthorne

Just click here for a fuller list


photo of Laugharn castle

2018 Festival

October 26, 2017

Here we go once again ! Next year's festival will take place on April 6-8. Weekend tickets will go on sale October 31st and we have literary, music and sporting legends lined up for you, many of whom have never appeared at Laugharne before.

There will be no individual tickets this year and the weekend tickets will be priced at £/80/90/100 plus booking fee. The faster you buy them the cheaper they will be. They will only be available through TicketText and there will be a direct link available from the tickets page of this website.

Regular news updates are available on the Facebook page - We very much look forward to seeing you there - pob hwyl!


Photo of clouds reflected from water on a beech

Sayonara 2017

May 30, 2017

Thanks to everyone who came to this year's festival. It was our tenth-anniversary edition and a lot of people rated it the best yet, which was nice. Here are a few more nice things people said about it.

"Laugharne 2017 was the best festival I've been to in decades. It had a superb line-up that ran from beginning to end of the three days. The atmosphere was excellent and allowed the 'performers' to hang out with the audiences. Wandering down the street and bumping into John Cooper Clarke or Roger McGough was quite surreal. To see people like Jeremy Deller or producer John Leckie talk in depth about their work was fascinating. Laugharne itself is a fantastic location and I had a great time. The football game we arranged between 'Laugharne Weekenders' and 'Laugharne locals' drew a crowd of a hundred and I made a lot of friends. I'm definitely going back" - James Brown (author and magazine editor)

"Well organised, unfussy and jolly" - Roger McGough ( poet and radio presenter )

"You can't beat Laugharne for festival fun. Artists and audience are united like in no other place. There really is nowhere like it" - Irvine Welsh ( author and scriptwriter )

"One of my absolute favourites now, Laugharne felt like a cross between the loveliest holiday, festival, concert and nature walk combined into one ale-fuelled weekend" - Hollie McNish ( Ted Hughes Award winning poet )

" What a wonderful hotchpotch of words, village beauty, books, music and madness." - Gemma Cairney ( Radio One presenter and author )

"I had a brilliant time and thought the festival was charming and wonderfully relaxed" - Sir Tony Robinson ( author, TV presenter and actor )

"Is there not a verb to Laugharne ? Meaning to hang out and absorb music, poetry, comedy and have wild conversations with special people in a very special place. I'll be doing it again next year. - John Leckie ( Stone Roses, Radiohead, Muse producer )

Just click here for a fuller list


people taling infront of a mural

At Last, The Programme (More or Less)

March 22, 2017

Just click here to see the provisional programme.