MEDWAY FESTIVAL OF MUSIC, SPEECH & DRAMA

A registered Charity no:287644

HISTORY OF THE FESTIVAL

The Festival was first named the Gillingham and Medway Music Festival and the first event took place in Napier Road School on May 17th 1974 with just three sections - vocal, choral and piano.

 

After a year at the Chapter School in Strood, the Festival moved to Upbury Manor School in Gillingham.  By 1980 Instrumental and Speech and Drama sections had been added resulting in the numbers of entries being more than doubled and the number of Adjudicators increased to eight.

 

The Festival celebrated its Silver Anniversary in 1999 and at this point some of the Committee members were founder members - after 25 years of loyal service they decided to stand down.

 

In 2001 the Committee decided to change the name of the Festival to its present name to reflect the more diverse sections that the festival offered and changed the venue from Gillingham to Rainham and more recently in 2006 the festival moved to the Fort Pitt Grammar School in Chatham.