Garforthnewsletter

    After eight wonderful years, beginning as a small idea on Main Street with a few independent food and drink businesses, the Garforth Community Feastival team has been forced to hang up our t-shirts for the final time. We are puzzled. Since relocating to a much safer, off-road venue in 2023 at the Garforth Leisure Centre car park, we have successfully organised a larger free community event. This new setup allowed us to add a seating area, hire tables and benches, and create a space where everyone could sit and relax for a while. This initiative has been overwhelmingly successful, thanks in large part to the incredibly proactive and helpful Garforth Leisure Centre team. Our small group of volunteers has worked diligently to ensure that accessible parking spaces are always available and supervised near the entrance for safety. Every year, we receive outstanding positive feedback from local attendees and from the wonderful group of small independent food traders, who ...

  We only have one park in Garforth – Barley Hill Park. There is no other land to build a new park on and because all nearby fields are prime building land to their owners, (which GNPF strongly opposes), there is little opportunity to easily acquire affordable land. What we do have is a number of playing fields. They act as parks in the summer but for the rest of the year they are too muddy to use for anybody but the local sports teams (if the land space is big enough to support a sports pitch). But what if we built a footpath around the outer edges of each playing field? Wide enough to accommodate walkers and cyclists at the same time, with benches for the old and the very young to stop and rest. Suddenly we have half a dozen year-round accessible parks in our town, scattered across the community to make them accessible to more residents. Every part of Garforth has its own little park and the playing fields within them remain available to our local sports men and women.   G...

  Seven Students from Stagecoach Performing Arts Garforth and Wetherby got a wild opportunity to appear in the latest series of Animal Care Club airing this month. These eager young cadets got to assist in helping pets, farm animals, wildlife and zoo animals alongside presenter Kiera Nicole-Brennan. Shooting in locations across Yorkshire, the students loved every moment of visiting the Animal Sanctuaries, Wildlife Centres and Farms. To be selected Stagecoach helped the students put together head shots and self-tapes to submit, sending through videos of themselves talking about their favourite animals. Student’s Leo, aged 8 from Micklefield, Johnny, aged 7 from Rothwell, Annie, aged 9 from Methley, Amelia, aged 8 from Wetherby, Zara, aged 8 from Wetherby and Bella, aged 8 from Wetherby where the successful few to make it onto this fun and educational show. Presenter Kiera Nicole-Brennan was also very inspiring for the students. As Channel 5’s Milkshake’s younge...