We promised, in collaboration with Plymouth Waterfront Partnership, we would make a bigger and better Seafest this year. Through our partners we delivered a torrent of marine-themed activities, events and travel options that engaged visitors with the UK’s first National Marine Park. Let’s take a deep-dive:
Tinside Lido – Plymouth Active Leisure
Tinside Lido proved to be extremely popular. We had no idea that we had so many water-babies hiding in our city!
- Free swimming sessions: 509 participants
- Dog swim session: 300 participants
- Snorkel and diving sessions: 102 participants
- Youth swimming event: 76 participants
- Yoga sessions: 24 participants
- Swim Safe sessions: 16 participants
- Pilates sessions: 8 participants
With an overall figure of… 1,035 within Seafest weekend!
Mount Batten Centre and Artillery Tower
The team at the Mount Batten Centre were happily rushed off their feet making sure visitors who booked onto the sailing, kayaking and paddleboarding sessions took to the Sound with a smile. We also had Millie, one of our Rangers, over at the Mount Batten Artillery Tower to welcome visitors of whom learned about our naval history, with a beautiful view.
- Across the sailing, kayaking and paddleboarding sessions: 300 participants
- Mount Batten Artillery Tower: 400 visitors
A grand total of 700 people getting engaged with Plymouth Sound National Marine Park within 2 days is a staggering effort, well done team.
Royal William Yard
We worked closely with Royal William Yard and Plymouth’s Laureate of Word, Rosemarie Corlett, to bring a talented collective of poets and writers to perform spoken word poetry to captivate festival-goers. We saw a total of 90 people take time to sit and enjoy our new model of engagement, over a 2 hour performance.
An extra mention from South West SUP, who have been pivotal for not just instructing paddleboarding but building communities on the surface of our Marine Park. They took 94 visitors out for paddleboarding sessions and paddleboard yoga.
Overall, Royal William Yard saw 3,000 visitors engaging with food stalls, workshops, performances, walks and tours.
Mount Edgcumbe
Our partners at Mount Edgcumbe opened their doors to Seafest visitors for bookable, free historical house tours throughout Sunday as well as Alpaca walks on Saturday. Both were completely full!
- Mount Edgcumbe House Tours: 96 visitors
- Alpaca walks: 20 participants
It was brilliant to see so many people excited to explore the house and learn about our historical heritage.
Travel
With subsidised travel throughout the Seafest weekend. We helped 1325 festival-goers onto the Mount Battery Ferry and 1379 travelling with Plymouth Boat Trips. For the visitors who preferred to keep their feet on dry land, we also arranged a free ‘Shark and Ride’ service with Plymouth City Bus that saw 630 passengers.
With a total of 3,334 festival-goers that hopped on discounted or free public transport.
It’s brilliant to see what an massive impact a collaboration with Plymouth Sound National Marine Park and Plymouth Waterfront Partnership (along with all the other businesses, initiatives and organisations) can bring to our wonderful, sea-bound city.
We hope you had a fantastic weekend, the smiles, feedback and statistics seem to shine in a very positive light. For any further feedback visitors would like to make please visit our form here.
We would also love to see your Seafest photos which you can upload here.
Our involvement in Seafest 2024, bringing free taster sessions through our delivery partners, Tinside Lido, Mount Batten Watersports and Activities Centre and Mount Edgcumbe Country Park. As well as subsidised travel was made possible thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Youth Investment Fund and Plymouth City Council.