The Festival has run since 2014 and is organised by Berrylands Scout Group.
The Berrylands Festival aims to recreate the charm of an old-fashioned village fair, offering activities that appeal to all ages and allowing families, friends and the community to come together. Along with a couple of major attractions, such as inflatable fun runs and bouncy castles, we also provide traditional games like tug-of-war, coconut shys, and crockery smashing—activities that are rarely seen nowadays but are undeniably fun!
The event is led by the Berrylands Scout Group with the help of our friends in the community. The main aim is to bring the community together for a day of fun and celebration, whilst also raising much needed funds to support the Scouts.
Behind the scenes, we work hard to keep our attractions affordable or even free. We seek sponsorship and grants to subsidise stalls, and we ensure there are always affordable catering options available. We support local businesses by purchasing from them for the event and offering them stall opportunities. Additionally, we provide space for other local civic groups to share their initiatives, as the festival thrives on community involvement.
As part of the festival, we encourage members of our Scout Group to get involved in running some of the stalls, giving them great experience of working with other people and supporting them to learn a few skills for running their own events - you'll see them running things like the coconut shy or lucky lollipops!
The funds raised from the festival are invested into the Berrylands Scout group, helping us build up our equipment for long-term sustainability and contributing to the fund to save the scout hut.
The event needs volunteers and sponsorship to make it happen so please do contact us if you can help in any way.
The History Behind the Berrylands Festival
The Berrylands Festival began as an idea back in 2014 when the residents and scouts organising the annual Berrylands Fireworks event were discussing how the centre of Surbiton had a thriving festival each year and a monthly farmers market, and yet Berrylands with it's population of 10,000, lots of open space and people known for being active in the community only had school fairs as our main summer events.
Everyone knows that Berrylands is a hotbed of people doing all sorts of volunteering, activism, running successful businesses and yet they were all quietly hidden away and that just didn't seem right to us. After various ideas were explored, an idea for a village fair was born.
The first year was small by today's standards as it was just an experiment funded by the National Lottery so we tried out some bouncy castles and accidentally created what became the tradition of a massive tug-o-war and a few other ideas. Over the years this has grown to things like Laser Quest and giant climbing walls whilst our BBQ is now about local hand-made burgers and a varied drinks menu.
In 2019 we experimented with live music as the United Reform Church kindly lent us a portable stage so hopefully that too will become a regular feature. Both the Police and Fire Brigade have continued to support us by bringing down vehicles so that the children (and adults) can set off sirens and have a go with the hoses.
Today the Berrylands Festival is predominantly run by volunteers from the scout group, their family and friends. The planning team and nearly everyone you will see manning a stall on the day is a local Berrylands resident, and we couldn't do it without them!
If you are interested in helping out in some way (big or small) then find out more here.