Evington Echo joins in with the Old Town Festival
On April 25, 2026 in bright spring weather, Jubilee Square in Leicester feels like more than just a public space. During the Old Town Festival—spread across the cathedral, the Guildhall, and the Jewry Wall—it becomes a place where everyday life and local history meet.
The podcast captures this as it happens. Instead of formal interviews, it’s made up of natural conversations—people chatting with curiosity, humour, and personal opinions. A key point is that heritage becomes easier to connect with when people can approach it in their own way: it’s free, informal, and open to interpretation. That doesn’t mean “dumbing it down”—it means making it welcoming.
Around the square, there are reenactments, stories, and family activities. Vikings, Roman soldiers, and Civil War groups aren’t presented like museum displays telling you what to think. They work more like conversation starters that encourage people to ask questions and share what they know.
The event also shows how stories mix together. Norse myths are told alongside local legends like Black Annis and the well-known story of Richard III. The point isn’t to present one “official” version of the past, but to show how history and storytelling keep changing depending on who is telling them and why.
What comes through strongly is that heritage isn’t only about the distant past—it’s also a way to talk about the present. Conversations move from old beliefs to modern concerns like education, how people learn now, and the effects of fast digital media. People don’t argue that phones or social media are “bad,” but they do suggest that real understanding often needs time, reading, listening, and longer conversations.
Another theme is that history isn’t only found in museums or archives. A lot of it lives in ordinary people’s memories, family habits, and day-to-day traditions. At the festival, these personal stories have space to surface—like an 80-year-old’s memories of post-war London, alongside reflections on migration, cultural change, and local customs.
This raises an important question: whose history gets kept and whose gets missed? The podcast highlights the value of stories that never make it into official records—unarchived letters, forgotten memories, and everyday practices passed down informally.
Movement also matters. People, traditions, and stories travel through migration, work, and cultural exchange, and that reshapes what a place “is.” The mix of Caribbean folklore, Eastern European stories, and local British myths at one event shows how layered Leicester’s shared history has become.
Overall, the festival doesn’t present a single story of Leicester’s past. It shows many perspectives at once. Heritage, in this sense, is less about putting the past behind glass and more about getting people involved—talking, questioning, and sharing.
The podcast acts as a record of that, capturing voices that might not usually be heard and placing them in a shared public setting. The bigger challenge it points to is what happens after the festival: how do we keep these kinds of open, community-led conversations going all year round?
Listen to the full podcast to hear the conversations in people’s own words, shaped by the atmosphere and spontaneity of the day.
