Summerfest2025

We’re delighted to share that this year’s Hamilton Summer Festival — our first-ever summer-long cultural programme — has been a fantastic success, and it couldn’t have happened without your support.

Throughout July, we delivered a vibrant line-up of nearly 40 events and activities, hosted at key venues including Hamilton Townhouse, the library, Low Parks Museum, the Regent Shopping Centre, and Quarry Street. The festival brought thousands of people into Hamilton and helped shine a spotlight on everything our town has to offer.

Festival highlights included:

• The Hamilton Summer Gala Day on Quarry Street, drawing an estimated 4,000 additional visitors into the town centre
• Pride SL25, delivered by Lanarkshire Pride and supported by us, also took place on Quarry Street. The event featured a vibrant community celebration and parade that covered an extensive route through the town centre, welcoming an estimated 7,000 visitors and supported by over 40 volunteers — a powerful demonstration of our community spirit
• A special four-day Harry Lauder exhibition in the Regent Centre, delivered in partnership with Low Parks Museum, celebrating one of Scotland’s most iconic entertainers
• A spotlight on Low Parks Museum’s exhibitions throughout the month, including the Pride Connect youth group exhibition, showcasing creativity, identity, and inclusion
• A diverse programme at Hamilton Townhouse, including workshops, performances, and family activities — all contributing to a lively and inclusive cultural offering
• Extensive media coverage, with the festival promoted throughout July on Go Radio (audience reach over 150,000), featured twice on BBC Radio Scotland, and Pride SL25 covered extensively by Clyde One News, helping amplify our message across the region
• Over 6,000 hits on our dedicated festival website and a combined social media reach of nearly 300,000
• Strong collaboration with local businesses:
  – Businesses participated in market stalls, our town centre trail, and hosted their own events
  – Many also celebrated Pride, decorating windows, supporting promotions, and helping to activate and animate the town centre, creating a truly inclusive and welcoming atmosphere
  – Four local businesses generously donated amazing prizes for our weekly giveaway competition, helping drive online engagement and excitement throughout the month

The success of this first summer festival reflects the collective strength of our town and the power of partnership, which we hope to grow and develop further in future years.

We’d love to hear your thoughts — if your business experienced an uplift in visitors, sales, or awareness of your business, driven by new and extra visitors during the festival, please reply and let us know. We are launching a post event survey to support analysis of the impact. Details will be provided at later date. We are also awaiting further footfall data.

Thank you once again for your support. 

Scotland Loves local campaign is back! Saturday 23^rd August to 30^th August. 

We will be using this week as per previous years to celebrate local businesses in our town centre. Would you like involved? On Wednesday morning coming we will be visited by the SLL team to capture photography as part of this national campaign. If you like to be involved get in touch at malcolm.thomasharley@hamiltonbid.org