Published: October 5, 2012
Help Burnham Food Festival's Sarah secure £10,000 of funding

A Burnham-On-Sea resident who co-organised the town's first Food and Drink Festival has this week appealed for help in securing £10,000 of funding.

On the back of last weekend's first food festival, Bev and Sarah Milner Simonds, right, are launching a new local business-to-business food network to promote local food producers alongside other food events.

To proceed with the plans, they need funding and Sarah has appealed to residents to vote for her in an EDF competition to win £10,000. She is one of ten 'green heroes' chosen by EDF Energy's Team Green Britain community to encourage and inspire others to live in a more sustainable way and she needs as many votes to be submittedhere as possible by 10am on October 6th to be in with a chance of winning.

Sarah told Burnham-On-Sea.com: "This was our first time organising a festival of this scale and the interest and attendance levels took us a little by surprise. We organised it because we feel very strongly that Burnham can become a centre for Somerset producers and we love our little town."

"We also care passionately about food provenance and wanted to introduce our neighbours to a broader range of suppliers and help traders make new B2B contacts. To further our aims the small surplus from the festival will be going to fund a new food and drink B2B network. This will consist of events, talks and tours."

"Another way we are seeking to fund this venture and to kick off the next Burnham food and drink festival, is my bid to be a Team Green Britain Hero. This is an online voting competition with £10,000 as the prize. The prize money would come to Somerset to fund food and drink projects, including the next festival."

Last Saturday's food festival attracted over 2,000 visitors and was hailed a success by traders and visitors alike - as we reported here.