Press Release

Sunflowerfest returns 17-19th August 2012 . After the success of this years festival where attendance trebled to 3,000 and hundreds camped for the weekend at Tubbys Farm 31 Cabra Road Hillsborough. Sunflowerfest 2012 will be bigger and better than ever .

Sunflowerfest 2012 will offer new areas , a great live music, an arena of ideas and lots of activities for families and kids of all ages .

Early Bird Ticket Promotion: Full weekend with camping early bird tickets are now available at the great price of £39 from HMV (Belfast, Lisburn and Dublin), Molly’s Parlour, Rusty Zip, Hillsborough Court House, Belfast Welcome Centre, Cafe del Mondo (Derry), Varin Marshall @ Botanic Media,Phil McCarroll @ SO:NI and Lyndon Stephens @ Champion Sound System. http://www.sunflowerfest.co.uk/tickets/ . There will be major surprises at next years festival so if you are a wise investor its well worth getting your tickets in early. The promotion will run until February 2012.

General Info

With a threefold increase in attendance this year Sunflowerfest plans to double the attendance next year. Tubby’s Farm will be the beautiful venue for the third Sunflowerfest.

Sunflowerfest is an excitingly different and experiential weekend festival of great music and arts. It will nurture the mind, body and soul through a wide range of superb music, fantastic fun for the family, creative writing workshops, film, story telling and interactive art and workshops. There will be yoga, meditation, reiki, aroma therapy and other complementary therapy disciplines.

There will be first class food and drink.

There will be 2 singles camping paddocks and one solely for families

Sunflowerfest donates £2 of every weekend ticket to charity.

Sunflowerfest is a volunteer based festival.

Sunflowerfest shares a love of the countryside.

Some of next years attractions

Sunflowerfest 2012 will feature the Finn Macool main stage, the much acclaimed Campfire Stage and the The Barn ( for the rowdies!) For families and kids of all ages, the Enhanted Glade and the dedicated Kidz Zone ( themed to CS Lewis), will particularly appeal. There will be a (25 stall) craft and food village adjacent to Paddy’s Electric Disco Shed ( a new area for electronica, folktronica and night time DJ sets ) .

The complementary therapies will offer yoga, meditation, Reiki, massage, aroma therapy and Tai Chi. Salon Moot will be the venue for impromptu acts, discussion, poetry, story telling and for anyone with something to say.

GET TICKETS HERE!

Head over to our official Facebook page to see more!

Oh yes….tickets for next year are now on sale at Molly’s Parlour Lisburn, Rusty Zip in Botanic, Botanic Media in College Gardens, Phil McCarroll at SO:NI

They will soon to be available at Belfast Welcome Centre and Hillsborough Tourist Information at the old Courthouse. HMV Donegall Arcade, Lisburn, Newry, Derrry and Dublin. ONLY £39 FOR WEEKEND WITH CAMPING .

Have a superb week of music!

M

Links:

http://iheartau.com/2011/10/northern-ireland-music-awards-the-nominations/

http://www.facebook.com/northernirelandmusicawards

http://www.belfastmusic.org/

OFFICIAL TICKETING AGENTS ARE:

Molly’s Parlour Lisburn

Rusty Zip Botanic Ave Belfast

Cafe del Mondo The Craft Village Derry

Botanic Media (Varin Marshall) College Gardens beside Methody

SO:NI Phil McCarroll

OH Yeah Centre : Lyndon Stephens from Monday

And soon through:-

Belfast Welcome Centre Donegal Place Belfast

Tourist Information Centre Hillsborough Court House

HMV, Donegal Arcade Belfast, Lisburn, Derry, Newry and Dublin

Great for Christmas Pressies, birthdays, engagements, Bar Mitzvahs, Chinese New Year, St Valentines Day, or just cos Sunflowerfest is the best boutique festival of the summer.

This is our life blood so chip in and help us build on this years huge success and bring you another fantastic weekend in the country.

-Michael & Sunflowerfest Team.

We’ve been really lucky to receive some great reviews of this years festival, If you get a moment, here are a few;

All Gone Pop Have a full three day review, Highlighting most of our Barn Stage and Main stage acts.

Stuart Bailie Gives a review on our sunday main stage headliner Duke Special.

Alternative Ulster Magazine is hosting images by Suzie McCracken. An Array of wonderful photos of Saturday and Sunday at the farm in 2011.

And you only have to do a quick YouTube Search to find hundreds of home videos of this year’s festival!

We are already working very hard to bring you another magnificent festival next Aug 17-19 at the farm.

Vanessa, Phil, Varin, Lyndon, Jonny and me have been having some productive brainstorming sessions and the consensus seems to be that we should keep going with what we are doing and just try and build on the fantastic success of this year. Our numbers grew to around 3000 this year so the good word and vibe is spreading because that is a huge increase from last year.

Varin is working on the new tickets and merchandise so stay tuned for developments on those fronts!

Thanks to Cara and Lara too for all their continued hard work and support. Thank you to all the other superb volunteers as well. It doesn’t happen without you guys.

If you would like to get involved with the festival just fill in a form from the volunteer section of the website and send it off to Cara.

There will be more new great acts and imaginative themes around the site next year- especially for the Kidz Zone  and Enchanted Glade of Mystery and Surprise. There will be kids zones for kids of all ages so don’t be feeling neglected when you see the kids having lots of fun – you can too!

Watch out for the new look main stage next year too.

Some good lovers of Sunflowerfest have been making very helpful and constructive suggestions on how we can improve things and these are much appreciated. keep ‘em comin’ !

Oh yes, life on the farm at the moment: It’s harvest time for the apples……plenty of apples. lots of great crumbles, sponges and tarts in our house this month. Stewed apples with yoghurt is great for breakfast. We peel them, quarter them add a little lemon peel and a small cinnamon stick and a little sugar and lightly poach – yum!

ENJOY YOUR DAY.

From everyone in Sunflowerland.

Best regards,

Michael Magowan

This is the 2nd year of Sunflowerfest, the first year was a very encouraging beginning, and the SO:NI crew had never experienced a better “vibe” and audience feedback at a show or festival in many years of running, promoting and attending gigs. We are encouraging people to join us for the whole weekend, and stay over, but it’s also possible to pick your favourite day and join us then!

Tickets are on sale though the official website – and at HMV, The Rusty Zip and The Belfast Welcome Centre (Belfast), HMV and Molly’s Parlour (Lisburn) and also the NITB office in Hillsborough. Both weekend and day tickets are available – with the weekend camping ticket being our best value offer – £45 for the weekend, working out at £15 per day, including camping! We have also just introduced a camping supplement of only £5 for those who wish to camp one night.

Sunflowerfest is a celebration of all that’s great about this part of the world! Friday will be headlined by MojoFury, Saturday by Not Squares and Sunday by Duke Special and Cashier No.9 – a fine and eclectic collection of Northern Irish acts – here is the full line-up……

FRIDAY 19TH AUGUST – Music Starts 4pm

Main Stage:
MOJO FURY
POCKET BILLIARDS
Intinn
The Dead Presidents
Pat Dam Smyth
The Rupture Dogs
Colly Strings
Barn Stage:
NOISE CONTROL
THE DEFECTS
Roysta
The Barley Mob

Gascan Ruckus
Like Statues
R51
Sons of Encouragement

Campfire Stage:
Gotta B.Live
Scorpion Jack
Bernadette Morris
Myles McCormack
Nathan Miller

Saturday 20th August – Music Starts 12pm

Main Stage:
NOT SQUARES
NASA ASSASSIN
SWANEE RIVER
Trucker Diablo
The Sabrejets
Pay*ola
Southern
Phoenix Fire
‘Tric
Invinyl
Levity Breaks

Barn Stage:
KASPER ROSA
Mental Deficiency
Craiceann
Dutch Schultz

The Bonnevilles
Deadlights
The Everyday Superheroes
Shake!
Echo Raptors
Worldsend

Campfire Stage:
GARETH DUNLOP & BAND
The Murder Balladeers
Bandwagon (acoustic)
Eilis Phillips
Tony McHugh
Rachel Austin
Ezekiel Boom
Stevie McCann

Sunday 21st August – Music Starts 12pm

Main Stage:
DUKE SPECIAL
CASHIER NO.9
Inishowen Gospel Choir
Rams’ Pocket Radio
Craiceann
Silhouette
Katie & The Carnival
The Farriers
Tanya & The Whiskey Princes

Barn Stage:
Campaign LK
Rassie Ai & The Rydimz Platoon Reggae Band
Louisiana Joyride
Leeward Side
Jifubuki
The Love Seeds
Seven Summits
Sons of Robert Mitchum
The Rolled Dice

Campfire Stage:
Magwere
Kyle John Suckling
Naiomh O’Hagan
Wookalily
Duncan Campbell & The Duty Paid Society
The Satellites
Junior Johnson & The Handsome Bastards
Johnny Vans
Paul Corrigan

We also have 2 late additions to the bill – one of the stand-out acts of the 2010 Fest, Pat Dam Smyth will play the Main Stage on early Friday evening, and powerful new alt-rock band Levity Breaks will kick off the main stage on the Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately though, Clown Parlour have been forced to withdraw due to personnel  issues.

Some more good news – due to major public demand we have introduced a one night camping supplement of only £5 per person for anyone who is only attending the Festival for one of the days, but would like to camp! Site must be vacated by 11am the following morning.

By the mid 1950s, soundsystems had eclipsed live musicians in any combination for the purpose of staging parties. By the second half of the decade, custom-built systems began to appear from the workshops of specialists, who constructed wardrobe-sized speaker cabinets. As time progressed, sound systems became much more powerful and far more complex than their predecessors, which were as simple as record players with a single speaker.

The culture of the Soundsystem was brought to the UK with the mass immigration of Jamaicans in the 1960′s and 70′s.

The influence that this soundsystem culture from Jamaica has had on music worldwide cannot be ignored, from the rave scene in the 80′s/90′s to festivals, right through to modern day hip hop or R&B; without the Jamaican Soundsystem none of this would have been possible!

Explosion Soundsystem is proud to present you the first Sunflowerfest Riddim Corner!

Part of the Sunflower festival, our tent will be entirely dedicated to Reggae Music in the finest Jamaican tradition.

Explosion Soundsystem are a Reggae Soundsystem originating from Belfast, we have been running dances in and around Belfast for 10 years in various venues. We run our own soundsystem at our dances with the aim of staying true to the roots of Jamaican culture. We use ‘Scoop’ bass bins (a Jamaican speaker design) which provides a smooth rounded bassline with a wicked kick guaranteed to get any dancehall bouncing! We have our very own Dee-Jay/MC in Ranking Fox, who keeps the dance nice with his sweet flows of conscious lyrics and singing, over ‘versions’ and riddim tracks! He knows how to get the crowd involved & really makes each dance a special experience!

RIDDIM CORNER GUESTS:

Roots Corner is Dublin’s newest Roots and Dub collective. All long time selecters, Tuathal, T-Woc and Brigadier JC run regular sessions around the capital. Their sound is a bass-conscious mix ranging from 70s Jamaican roots killers to fresh UK steppers with a few surprises in between…

Friday 19^th August – 8-11pm

Dub Foundry is a French Producer and DJ based in Belfast,   member of Explosion Soundsystem, Dub Foundry plays the heaviest side of Reggae Music: UK Dub Steppers. Unmistakable Kick, heavy Bass, crazy effects, Dub Foundry will be playing a mix of his own productions and some fresh French selections.

Saturday 20^th August – 8-10pm

Red Rasta hail from Belfast and have been providing the city with the best in classic Ska, Blue Beat, Rocksteady and Reggae for nearly 10 years. If you want to skank, then you’ve come to the right place.

Sunday 21^st August – 8-10pm