Handmade Festival Announce First Wave Of Bands

Handmade Festival will be returning to Leicester’s O2 Academy in 2018 for two days of the finest music, comedy, art, film, performance and photography, hand-picked and carefully curated. The festival will take place on May 5 & 6. Handmade is a multi-venue music and arts festival in the city of Leicester. The festival, which is totally independent, is curated by some of the city’s best loved independent venues and promoters, all of whom have been involved in putting on events for decades, working tirelessly to bring great things to Leicester.

Since its inception in 2013, Handmade Festival has gone from strength-to-strength, and has consistently challenged people’s expectations of what a local independent DIY festival can be, and what it can offer in the city. In its first year Handmade took over reclaimed spaces - including an ex-library, the city’s historic guildhall, a church and some of the oldest buildings in the city. In 2018 Handmade will be filling all of O2 Academy Leicester’s venues as well as spaces within University of Leicester Students Union and Attenborough Arts Centre making it the festival’s biggest event to date.

Over the past 5 years, the festival has seen sets from artists such as: Frightened Rabbit, Twin Atlantic, British Sea Power, IDLES, Pulled Apart By Horses, Deaf Havana, We Are Scientists, 65daysofstatic, Swim Deep, Los Campesinos, Dry the River, Dutch Uncles, Slaves, Bo Ningen, And So I Watch You From Afar, Shonen Knife, Eagulls, Honeyblood, Iliketrains, Rolo Tomassi, Nine Black Alps, Three Trapped Tigers, The Twilight Sad, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Sam Duckworth, Johnny Foreigner, Tangled Hair, Tellison Sky Larkin, Sulk, Maybeshewill, Kagoule, Jaws, Shame, Goat Girl, HMLTD, Happyness, Haus and Her Name Is Calla, with comedy performances from Robin Ince, Rob Deering, James Acaster and many more.

Line-up:

Circa Waves

Idles / Little Comets / Dinosaur Pile Up

Protomartyr / Future Of The Left

Grace Petrie / Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly / The Orielles / Delta Sleep / Her’s / Dream Nails / Peaness / She Makes War / Magique  / Mellow Gang / Rascalton / Rattle / Crosa Rosa / Eyre Llew / Natalie Evans

Plus many more acts performing across multiple stages to be announced. Weekend tickets are on sale from: http://www.handmadefestival.co.uk