Party in the Park returned to Miners’ Welfare Park for three days in July 2023, mixing a retro Friday night with a full weekend of Party On The Pitch.
Friday started with The Sounds of RETRO
Friday 14 July had its own identity as “The Sounds of RETRO”. Keeping that title in the archive matters because it shows how the event was experimenting with themed Friday evenings rather than simply stretching the same programme across three days.
The surviving official event pages give us unusually clear evidence for the structure of this weekend, which means the archive can preserve the days properly rather than relying on memories years later.
Party On The Pitch took over the weekend
Saturday 15 July ran from 11am to 9pm, followed by Sunday 16 July from midday to 6pm at Miners’ Welfare Park. For families, that created two different sorts of day: a longer Saturday and a Sunday that still left plenty of time to enjoy the park and entertainment.
The day cards below preserve those timings while the story around them explains what made the weekend different.
Some of the names from 2023
Surviving Party in the Park material names supporting acts including Making it Madonna — Danni Britch and Big Men in Town. As official websites or social profiles are verified, the people section can link visitors directly to them.
This is the direction for the whole archive: not just remembering that “there was music”, but reconnecting the actual people and groups with the year they appeared.
A weekend with its own character
The combination of a named Friday event and Party On The Pitch across the weekend gives 2023 a very different story from the early one-day years. Photographs, programme artwork and community memories can now sit around that story rather than being presented as disconnected archive items.
The following year brought another major change: Party in the Park moved to Collycroft Recreation Ground.
