Drumroots African Drumming Performance at Manchester’s Festival of Nature.

As part of the BBC’s Summer of Wildlife, Heaton Park hosted Manchester’s very own Festival of Nature. It was a free, fun packed family day with a whole host of wildlife activities including Creepy Crawly Roadshow, bug hunting, fishing, falconry, arts and crafts, storytelling and of course Drumroots were there to provide uplifting African drumming workshops and performances. One of the main highlights of the event was a special guest appearance from Naomi Wilkinson from CBBC’s Wild who spent the whole day taking part in all the fantastic activities.

Joining us for this occasion were brothers Dom and Francis Galligan who regularly work with Drumroots proving expert backing on the bass drums. They really helped to get
the place rocking!

As we arrived at Heaton park we noticed the large area that had been transformed for this festival with stalls, activity areas circus tents and even a tepee!

Naomi Wilkinson enjoyed drumming with us for our first workshop and happened to be a very good drummer, to our surprise she stayed for the whole session and gave it her all, encouraging the children and generally having a fun time.

Also at the festival were our good friends Mikey and Kathryn from Gravity Live who I almost didn’t recognise as they were in full costume as white rabbits straight out of Alice in wonderland bouncing around on their springy stilts.

As the day passed it was clear that the festival was going really well which we heard had over 2,000 visitors. Many people commented on the high quality of the activities, stalls and performances on offer.

To end the event we were invited to lead a parade with our drums with Naomi and all the children dressed as animals to the wildlife wish tree.

This event was organised by Red Rose Forest in partnership with Manchester City Council, the Environment Agency, Manchester Museum, the University of Manchester, the BBC, Salford University and GMEU.

A big thank you to Naomi Wilkinson for drumming with us and being a good sport, Francis and Dom Gallaghan for their support and to Claire Morris for organising the event and for getting us involved. We had a great time and would love to do it all again next year.