FitzFest: a truly inclusive community festival for all music lovers!

A HUGE heartfelt thanks to everyone who came, helped, ate, drank, danced, giggled, sang, bounced, sparkled and had the very best day with us at FitzFest 2024, Fakenham’s first ever truly inclusive music festival!  

Last weekend, our Norfolk day service The Maltings hosted their very first inclusive music festival where hundreds of festival lovers enjoyed great live music, food and activities.  

Deputy manager Toby said: “A huge thank you to the Maltings team for all their hard work. We managed to raise £8,400, which will make such an enormous difference for our members. FitzFest was our opportunity to celebrate difference and diversity, encourage inclusion and inspire equality, and it was incredible to see our dreams come true on the day. We always had the FitzRoy values of being brave, creative, and seeing the person in mind, and I think we’ve gone above and beyond in demonstrating them throughout this.” 

We had nearly 600 people at FitzFest in the end over the course of the day and it was such a warm, welcoming atmosphere. The event was really well supported by the local learning disability community and it was fantastic to see that people felt safe to truly be themselves and just enjoy the occasion without worrying what anyone was thinking of them. The smiling faces on the day made all the hard work so worthwhile! 

“I’m so proud of everyone who’s put so much effort in to make this happen – most especially our incredible support worker Rachel Lewis, who had the idea in the first place and has put in an extraordinary amount of work to make it all happen. We’re also extremely grateful to all the bands and businesses who chose to so generously support us and help make it happen, including Fakenham Rugby Club.  

“The inaugural FitzFest is certainly the first and only truly inclusive community music festival that I know of and it’s been incredible to see it go so well. In fact, it went so well that we’re already planning the next one – watch this space!”  

Maltings member Andrew attended FitzFest told us: “I’m a Maltings ambassador and I would like to thank them for our exciting event. I would like to say thank you to everyone who came along and I hope you had a great day. Thank you also to everyone’s support staff.”  

We can’t wait to see you all at FitzFest 2025.  

If you would like to be added to our FitzFest email list, please do send us an email to: fitzfest@fitzroy.org with your name, and include your mobile number if you would like to receive text alerts. You can also follow The Maltings on Facebook for updates about our work and our plans for 2025!