Melton Mowbray Town Estate has announced its first live music festival: Melton SKA Fest, 26 July 2025. Melton SKA Fest will be the largest event of its kind to be held in the Leicestershire market town and is billed as a one-day festival of SKA, 2Tone and Reggae music in the park. Organised by the Town Estate’s CEO, Dean Rees and aimed squarely at a family audience, the festival features a line-up of the UK’s leading Ska and 2Tone bands, a funfair, a range of children’s entertainment, live DJs, live streaming, and plenty of food, drink, music, and merchandise for sale.
Since his appointment in April, and with his extensive experience in venue management and event organisation, Rees is redefining Melton Mowbray’s offering as an event venue in line with the Purple Guide, meaning the Town Estate is now able to accommodate a wide range of outdoor events like music festivals, pageants, fairs, and open-air markets. The launch of Melton SKA Fest signals a major change in how the Town Estate approaches events and the use of its parks.
“Our goal as a charity is to create maximum community benefit, and I believe that leveraging the parks as open-air venues will not only bring visitors to Melton Mowbray to spend time and money, but it will enable us to fund more free-to-attend community events of higher quality for Meltonians.”
Rees continued, “This is the first music festival ever organised by the Town Estate, and the reception has been extremely positive, with hundreds of tickets already sold. With events like Melton SKA Fest, we’re aiming to bring as many new visitors to Melton as possible, and make our park an attractive outdoor event venue for organisers, especially those mid-scale B2C events like music festivals and concerts, motor pageants, circuses, and outdoor cinema screenings.”
Melton Mowbray Town Estate is positioning this market town as a viable new outdoor event destination for the East Midlands and eastern England, within easy reach of the large metropolitan centres of Leicester, Nottingham and Peterborough. With two more music festivals planned for 2025, Rees intends to make next year a big one for Melton Mowbray.
