Saturday Heritage Fair – Creativity, Community, and Leicester’s Living Past
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The Saturday Heritage Fair at Leicester Adult Education Centre celebrates creativity, community, and living history. Produced by Soar Sound Radio, this podcast features songwriter Meg McNeill on Leicester music pioneer Lawrence Wright, Bert McNeal from the Leicester Civic Society on civic heritage, re-enactor Rose on medieval storytelling, volunteers from Satsang Radio on cultural connection, and poet Tim Grayson on creative heritage at Belvoir Castle. Together, they show how Leicester’s people are keeping history alive through music, architecture, performance, radio, and poetry, linking the city’s past with its future.
The latest recordings from the Saturday Heritage Fair at Leicester Adult Education Centre capture how creativity and memory intertwine in the city’s living heritage. Produced by Soar Sound Radio, these conversations highlight the people who are preserving, interpreting, and reimagining Leicester’s past in ways that speak to the present.
The Fair, now an established part of Leicester’s cultural calendar, brings together volunteers, historians, artists, and community broadcasters who each approach heritage from their own angle — through music, architecture, performance, or radio. What unites them is a shared belief that history comes alive when it is experienced, discussed, and made personal.
Songwriter and researcher Meg McNeill opened the day with an unexpected rediscovery: the story of Lawrence Wright, a Leicester-born music publisher and founder of Melody Maker in 1926. Meg’s research connects the city’s industrial roots with its creative legacy, tracing how a local shoe worker’s son built a music empire that shaped British popular culture. Her appeal to find the missing blue plaque marking Wright’s former music shop underlined how easily local cultural achievements can fade from view if they are not actively remembered.
From music to architecture, Bert McNeal, Chair of the Leicester Civic Society, spoke about how the city’s heritage is held not just in buildings but in the shared sense of place they inspire. He described the Society’s work as “campaigning for a better Leicester,” combining the preservation of historic structures with advocacy for thoughtful new development. For Bert, civic pride is inseparable from civic responsibility — ensuring Leicester remains a city where everyone feels included and connected.
The Fair also reflected the power of historical re-enactment to make the past tangible. Rose, a 12th-century re-enactor with the group Normaness, shared how her team recreates medieval life through costume, craft, and combat displays. Her passion extends beyond performance: she is developing a research project on the heritage of Leicester’s Rally Park, exploring how disused industrial land might be repurposed for community use. Her story showed how historical imagination can inform practical change in the present.
A different kind of community connection came from the volunteers of Satsang Radio, part of the Hindu Sanskar Charity. Presenters Sajan, Kaushik, Dhruvi, Aarti, and others described how their Leicester-based station blends devotional music, spiritual discussion, and cultural education to serve Hindu communities locally and abroad. Entirely volunteer-run, Satsang Radio operates as both a form of service and a lifeline — offering companionship for housebound listeners, intergenerational dialogue, and a space to sustain faith and identity through sound.
The day ended with a conversation that bridged poetry, play, and place. Tim Grayson, Poet in Residence at Belvoir Castle, described how his role combines writing, teaching, and creative innovation. Alongside composing poems for events and commissions, he has developed the Belvoir Prize for Poetry and even designed a board game, Tataki, inspired by the castle’s Japanese gardens. For Grayson, heritage is “living, breathing, and reciprocal” — something we learn from and give back to through our creative work.
Together, these interviews reveal a city alive with imagination. Leicester’s heritage is not a static record of what once was; it is an unfolding story shaped by those who care enough to listen, share, and create. Whether through music, re-enactment, faith, or verse, the people at the Saturday Heritage Fair remind us that our collective past is most powerful when it helps us to see the future more clearly.
The full podcast of the Saturday Heritage Fair is available from Soar Sound Radio, featuring these and other interviews recorded throughout the day.
