Organisers have pledged to monitor noise levels after complaints from local residents
Feast On food festival in 2024(Image: Giulia Spadafora/Feast On)
Organisers of a food festival on the Downs have been given permission to expand its capacity by 1,000 and put on a second weekend of concerts. Feast On will now run for four days in July, followed by four nights of concerts the following weekend.
The food festival launched in 2024 and this summer will be its third year. However last year local residents complained that the music was too loud, so now the festival’s organisers have promised to limit noise levels and replace “excessively” large speakers with smaller ones.
Feast On hosts stalls run by some of Bristol’s best restaurants and street food traders, such as Cor, Bianchi, the Bank Tavern, Sky Kong Kong and Danny’s Burgers. A market also includes stalls from local favourites like the Cheese Connection, Easton Chilli and Somerset Charcuterie. Cooking classes and wine tasting are also planned, as well as axe throwing and live music.
This year the festival runs from Thursday, July 23, until Sunday, July 26. Councillors at a licensing hearing at Bristol City Council voted to permit changes to the festival’s licence, on Thursday, May 14. This increases its maximum capacity from 4,999 people to 6,000, and permits four extra nights of live music the following weekend.
Feast Live runs from Thursday, July 30, until Sunday, August 2. The Friday night will host a West End-style family show, while Saturday will see Haçienda Classical combining club culture with a 30-piece orchestra, DJs and singers. On Sunday pop singer Becky Hill will perform. Thursday’s act has not yet been announced.
Speaking at the hearing, festival director James Haggart said: “Over the past couple of years Feast On has operated successfully in Bristol and has become a well-established part of the city’s summer event calendar. The events have attracted over 20,000 happy attendees over the past two years.
“Our team works around the year planning these events and we will have over 500 local crew working on site at this year’s events. We’re also proud to support local charitable and community organisations including the Square Food Foundation and the Mazi Project, helping to promote food education, wellbeing and support vulnerable young people across the city.”
He added that this year the festival will employ acoustic consultants to monitor sound levels and prevent noise complaints from local residents. Last year people living in flats nearby, on Upper Belgrave Road, said the “throbbing bass” was incessant and questioned why a food festival needed to play music so loudly.
Becky Hill will headline one night of the new Feast Live three day open-air music event on the Downs(Image: Feast Live)
Jonathan Frere, one local resident, said: “The Downs are not, as some people seem to think, a showground in an isolated location, but a public open space in a densely populated urban area that is designated for the quiet enjoyment of all people, where the playing of loud music is normally expressly prohibited by byelaws.
“The worst aspect of this is the persistent, throbbing bass that provides the continuo of most modern music genres. This is especially penetrative and disruptive for those living nearby. I hesitate to mention this, but I’m sure it’s been mentioned before: Section 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998 does impose a duty on public authorities to protect us from noise.”
Local residents raised wider concerns about the increasing frequency of events happening at the Downs. As well as Feast On, there is a circus, cabaret show, and the Forwards Festival too, among other events. These help raise money to pay for maintenance of the Downs — although they also damage the grass which then requires further maintenance.
Councillors on the licensing hearing said they had to follow national rules when deciding whether to permit the application. These dictate that councillors must focus on the four licensing objectives: preventing crime and disorder, public safety, preventing public nuisance, and protecting children from harm. Wider concerns could not be taken into account at the hearing.
However they suggested local residents contact both the Downs Advisory Panel and the Downs committee, if they wanted to complain about how often events were taking place there and impacting their quality of life. The Downs committee is responsible for the area, and is made up of councillors and members of the Society of Merchant Venturers, a business group.
Green Councillor Guy Poultney, chair of the hearing, said: “I would strongly advise all residents and anyone who’s a stakeholder in the Downs to make their feelings known to the Downs Advisory Panel and the Downs committee. Because at the end of the day, it’s those groups who have a say when it comes to the use of the space as a whole.”