Entries for the 2025 Festival are now closed. Thank you to everyone that has entered. We look forward to welcoming you to the Festival in 2025!

You can view the 2025 Festival Syllabus here

We are keen to hear your views on our new syllabus.
Please complete our new questionnaire to help us inform future planning.

Notes And Lines

Celebrating a century of the Bedfordshire Festival.

To mark this special centenary year of the Bedfordshire Festival, a commemorative book has been commissioned, giving a unique insight into the events and performances that have shaped the Festival’s 100-year history.

Buy now: Notes and Lines 100 Years of the Bedfordshire Festival of Music Speech and Drama | PayPal

The Bedfordshire Festival of Music, Speech and Drama

The Bedfordshire Festival of Music, Speech and Drama was founded in 1921 and provides a showcase for the wealth of talent in the amateur performing arts in Bedfordshire and the surrounding area. The Festival offers a wide range of classes for all ages covering most musical genres including Classical, Musical Theatre, Jazz and Asian music, as well as many varied Speech and Drama classes including Verse Speaking, Acting, Mime and Improvisation. It features categories for school groups, Special School groups, orchestras, wind bands, junior and senior choirs and group creative performance.

Run by a Committee of volunteers and a part-time Secretary, the Festival is a charity. The organisers are extremely grateful to the Festival's supporters, its Individual and Corporate Friends, for their financial support, without which the Festival would not take place.

The Festival takes place at the Bedford Corn Exchange during the first week of March each year.

The next Festival will take place from 1st to 8th March 2025.

The Queens Award for Voluntary Service

On September 4th 2019, The Festival was awarded the Queens Award for Voluntary Service 2019, the highest accolade given to volunteer groups in the UK.

See articles from Bedford Today or Bedford Independent for more information