Littler’s big dream strikes the right note with councillors

THAME’S growing calendar of town centre events is about to get a lot livelier, with ambitious plans for a town-centre wide, multi-venue, multi-genre music festival.

An annual Thame Music Festival is the brainchild of Musician and Thame First Thursday Music Club (FTMC) Founder, Jon Littler, and on Tuesday evening he presented his proposal to members of Thame Town Council’s Community, Leisure and Recreation committee (CLR).

Jon Littler, performing with his band, 2AM Blue, at Music In The Park

Jon told Councillors: “Such a festival would add to the diversity of activities in the town, enhance its cultural life and stimulate and add value to the economy of the high street. The dream is that every pub and coffee shop, the Snooker Club etc in the town centre would become a venue with music going on in different places all day, a day where whole families could come, split up to enjoy different aspects of the festival, then come together at the end, like in Edinburgh for instance.”

Jon’s suggestion to the council was that a structure such as a Community Interest Company be formed, which would include town councillors on ‘the board’, and that the festival would be free to attend and not commercial, but funded by sponsorship and grants. Long-term, Jon envisaged 10 venues in the town, including perhaps classical music in the church, Rockabilly outside the Vintage Guitar Shop, folk, rock, electronic – every genre somewhere in the town, with a long term dream to create a brand new, dedicated performance venue of 3-400 capacity.

The festival could see a large, main stage in the town centre, with activities spilling into the Buttermarket, with 1950s, classic American cars lined up there close to the guitar shop, with perhaps Jordans Courtyard hosting accoustic, singer-songwriters performing in a marquee in the garden.

The town councillors were very supportive of Jon’s proposal and agreed to take his request for £5,000 seed money to kick start the campaign and seek further funding and sponsorship, to the council’s Budget Working Group for further consideration.