It is with sadness that the organisers of the extremely successful 2014 Narberth Children’s Festival have decided to call it a day in relation to future festivals.

The event held in August two years ago welcomed over 1,200 people through the doors of Bloomfield Community Centre who enjoyed a range of free, high quality activities, including storytelling, arts and crafts, Kung fu, fun football, cheerleading, zumba, drumming, forest skills, basketball, dance.

The event was organised and run by a small group of dedicated volunteers - some of whom had attended the original Children’s Festivals in the 1980s - and represented a comeback after 20 years.

Although the event was a massive success with extremely positive feedback from children and parents, it has not been possible to attract additional people to help with the development of future festivals.

This is despite holding fundraisers and attracting a significant level of publicity. Due to family and other commitments, the existing committee is sadly unable to continue without further support.

At a meeting held earlier this month, the difficult decision was made to wind up the Narberth Children’s Festival and distribute the remaining funds equally between three local organisations, namely Narberth Youth Theatre, Narberth Museum and Swim Narberth.

Alison Taylor-Jones, secretary of the committee, explained that these organisations were chosen as they reflect the ethos of the festival by supporting and encouraging children to participate in different activities - both sporting and cultural.

In addition, they are rooted very firmly in Narberth and do not receive any external funding to support the valuable work that they do.

The committee would like to say a huge thank you to all those local organisations and individuals who supported the festival, whether that was leading activities on the day, attending fundraisers, providing sponsorship, donating raffle prizes, or simply providing encouragement when things were getting tricky!

An amazing amount was achieved in a short space of time by a small group of people that provided a lot of enjoyment and the three organisations that will benefit from the distribution of funding will ensure that the legacy of the Children’s Festival continues.