The community interest company in the heart of Cardiff has secured the future of the festival and promised to build on the reputation it has developed over the past decade since being founded by Radio 1 DJ Huw Stephens and John Rostron in 2007.
Sŵn was the first multi-venue music festival in the UK outside of London, inspired by trips to SXSW in Austin, Texas and Iceland Airwaves in Reykjavik. It has grown into an event that showcases the very best up and coming artists alongside some more well-known names from Wales and beyond.
Guto Brychan, Chief Executive of Clwb said,
“Many people think of us just as a live music venue, but more recently we’ve been putting on events in other venues and locations around Wales. Providing a showcase for emerging artists and developing new ways to nurture them is core to what we do. When John suggested they wanted to handover Sŵn, it was the obvious next step for us to continue to grow and we are excited to be taking the helm and continuing its legacy.”
Over the last ten years Sŵn has hosted bands who’ve gone on to bigger success such as The Vaccines, Alt-J, Disclosure, Wolf Alice, Ghost Poet, Cate Le Bon, Ben Howard and The Staves. Clwb plan to continue to bring the best music has to offer to Wales.
This year, the festival will run over four days in venues around the city centre. The line-up will include indie rave-poppers, The Go! Team, Welsh songstress Gwenno and Radio 1 favourite’s Boy Azooga – the latter two recently appearing on Later… with Jools Holland. Drenge and Melbourne’s Rolling Blackout Coastal Fever will also be performing.
With a host of exciting new bands on the bill – Dream Wife, Goat Girl and the Blinders – Sŵn offers a platform for a variety of genres, this year welcoming more experimental acts such as Cosmo Sheldrake and Suuns.
Festival co-founder, Huw Stephens said:
“We started Sŵn Festival to capture the excitement of live music, of Welsh music, of Cardiff and its scene. It’s given me great pleasure to see a festival that could bring audiences, both regular and new, promoters and venues together with music from Wales and beyond. I am now eager to see what Clwb Ifor Bach, an important and hard-working venue and promoter, do with Sŵn next.”
John Rostron added:
“When we established Sŵn we always envisaged that at some point we would hand it over to the music community and step away, and we now have the right opportunity to do this. It’s thrilling and exhilarating to step away yet know that Sŵn will continue to develop in new hands. Without doubt it will be weird to go and not have any work to do, but I’m looking forward to being free to see as many bands as humanly possible that week.”
Sŵn Festival returns Wednesday 17 to Saturday 20 October 2018. Tickets go on sale on Friday 15 June, 9am. For more information and to be the first in the queue, visit swnfest.com, join the mailing list or follow @swnissound #swn2018
This year’s event is supported by For Cardiff and PRSF along with sponsors Ticketweb, Cowshed, Bubblewrap Collective, and Musicbox.
