Conwy Pirates Festival

Conwy Pirates were awarded £15,000 for their Conwy Pirate Festival

The festival is a celebration of heritage and folklore, featuring an authentic sailing schooner of the type used by pirates, armed with real cannons and crewed by re-enactors dressed in the period of the early 18th Century, known as “the golden age of piracy”. 

As this was the first year the Conwy Pirate Festival has been run by Conwy Pirates CIC, it was a lot of hard work as we were setting up systems and making new contacts. 

We have had an enormous amount of positive feedback about the event, for example we have had contact from Australia from a family of 8 who are planning to attend next year with friends from Singapore, their UK friends attended and they said it was so good that they are coming over just for the event. 

We are very lucky to have an official photographer Combat Wombat Inc who has given us permission to use his videos of the festival. He is involved as a volunteer throughout setup and close down so he has been able to give you a flavour of the amount of work involved by our volunteers at set up, here is a video 

https://www.facebook.com/100070173224397/videos/1481871336055471 

Here is our official video of the weekend to give you a feel of how it went. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYQRcItwtTs 

Here is the video of the battle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE09XPkfuts 

There were militia re-enactment groups who defend Conwy from the Pirate Ship attack with a battery of black powder cannon and muskets. The battle is a great success and enjoyed by all who attend, also giving the public a living demonstration of life at this time in history. 

We had a metalworking forge attend, and they demonstrated blacksmithing using traditional equipment. 

We had a ukelele school teaching the history of sea shanties along with teaching children to play some simple chords. 

We staged a sword fight, a new local reenactment group that we hadn’t worked with previously (Black Crow Conwy) were asked if two of their members would take part in the barrel race, one of them would pretend to be drunk and then a (planned) sword fight would ensue.   They were keen to get involved, and it went well, this ended by one of the pirates being arrested by the militia and then a flash mob of “what shall we do with the drunken sailor” at the end. A full video that can be seen here 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdEKsrZjcsM).

The festival provides engaging, fun activities for both residents and tourists alike. 

There were dance acts from local groups as well as free music and sea shanties throughout the weekend and all of our themed games that are played by children of any age, these include replica cannons knocking over wooden ships, a treasure island skittles games and a cannon ball run.

We successfully recruited 56 volunteers for the event. Two were through CVSC’s Amdani project via CVSC and they were great. Volunteers were taught how to run many of the games and although exhausted, they enjoyed helping people to enjoy their day. 

We feel that we are now, with help, in a good position to continue promoting Conwy through its piratical seafaring heritage.