Makers fair with 50 stalls, a bar and live music returning to East Bergholt

Featuring vendors selling everything from pottery to pizza, Kev's Festival of Makers was organised by metalwork artist Kevin Colbear and design and marketing consultant Miranda Acres.

Ms Acres said: "We started doing events in November 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. Kev works from his family farm in East Bergholt, and I do his marketing for him.

Kev Colbear, one of the key event organisers is an artist who mostly works in metal (Image: Kev's Festival of Makers)

"He came to me and said: 'We're in the middle of a lockdown, nobody can sell anything, all the events are being cancelled but we've got these two huge fields, so why don't we put on a market that can then be socially distanced where people can buy from real people,' so that's what we did.

"This is our fifth event now, we did one last Christmas, and three last year with another two to come in August and November."

The event's stallholders are exclusively professional independent makers (Image: Kev's Festival of Makers)

"We set up the event to support professional makers and traders — it's not a craft fair or a hobby fair, and we don't allow franchises or mass-produced products.

"We also like to keep it local, so everybody is Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex."

Chef Neil gathers ingredients from the local area in order to make a unique menu for every event he attends (Image: Kev's Festival of Makers)

Food and drink sellers attending include Chef Neil's Infusion Grill, who will be taking his cart around the local villages and creating a special menu for the event, Dollys Pizza who cooks from the back of a van, White Gardenia's Syrian Falafel, and the Nag's Head bar, which is fully licensed and built into a horsebox.

White Gardenia from Brightlingsea will be serving up Syrian style falafel (Image: Kev's Festival of Makers)

Ms Acres continued: "We only got live music this time — we don't have a budget to pay musicians and I'm not going to ask musicians to play for free. It would be like asking our stallholders to give their goods away.

"This year, however, one of our stallholders Danny asked if her daughter Jess Withers could perform. We told her that we didn't have a budget and don't want to take the mickey, but she said she just wanted to play and be heard."

The event will feature more than 50 stallholders from all over Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk. (Image: Kev's Festival of Makers)

"We also have another musician playing, a singer-songwriter called Will Foley. He just happened to see one of our road signs and contacted us asking if he could play on the Sunday."

Kevs Fesitval of Makers will be taking place over Saturday, May 7 and Sunday, May 8. Find out more on its Facebook page.