It’s a big year for the annual gathering of outdoor enthusiasts who come to Cumbria and attend the Kendal Mountain Festival which takes place later this month.
2025 marks the 45th anniversary of the event and the 21st year of involvement of festival director Steve Scott who has been talking to Business Crack’s Nigel Thompson.
With just weeks to go to an event that involves over 200 live sessions, 84 world, European and UK premieres, not to mention thousands of visitors from all over the world, Steve is calmly counting down to what he hopes will be the best festival yet.
12 months work may culminate in a four day event but for the 15 full time members of the KMF team it’s been a full-on year to create something that continues to be a major draw in the outdoor events calendar. This month a team of 120 volunteers help guide guests around the event.
“We call it the home of outdoor culture for a reason and it’s attracting people from all over the world now,” Steve says as he shows me the brochure listing the festival’s book events, 30 covering subjects as diverse as the Northwest Passage to the windswept shores of Morecambe Bay.
“And it’s thanks to the incredible team that we’ve got behind us programming it, organising it, delivering it in all weathers as is often the case in November.”
Planning for each year’s festival begins even before the current year’s event has taken place.
So how, in this day and age of GoPros and Youtube bringing awesome outdoor footage to us all the time, do you keep an event fresh?
“Keeping across things and having fresh ideas is not hard to come by because I think everybody in the team have got their own areas of speciality,” Steve says.
“Our cultural radar is very broad so we’re always picking up new films, new content, new speakers. That’s not the challenge. I think the challenge is fitting it all into four days.
“The joke is that we cover two weeks’ worth of content into four days! But I think once you know how to navigate the festival, you can quickly differentiate with the different events that you want to see.”
As someone who has spent significant times in the Alps and Scandanavia, wildlife interests Steve who will be hosting several of the themed sessions.
“We’ve got the wildlife session, The Wild Ones on the Sunday based on the Apple TV series,” Steve says. “We’ve got all the people front and behind the camera coming and showing us those lovely wildlife clips you don’t often see, apart from at the end of the programme.”
Encouraging the next generation to take an interest in the outdoors is the aim of the Kendal for Schools initiative which will see 1,700 eight to 12-year-olds from schools across the area take part in a two-hour immersive film session.
“I think we’re always trying to nurture new audiences but also show them the breadth of content that we’ve got at the festival,” Steve says.
For those on a budget, the event’s organisers say they are aware of the need to keep prices down.
He says: “I think we’ve got over 75 free events at the festival; the Basecamp Village that we build is free, you can come and not spend a lot of money apart from coffees and teas and a bit of food and we’ve got events where you can buy individual tickets; It’s something for everybody, for sure. “
This year too a business to business event is being held at Castle Green Hotel.
Aimed at people who are making stories, content, brands, marketeers, creatives Outdoor Connections will debate issues including AI, the environment, working with community groups in storytelling and content creation.
Marketer Daniel McAuley will use recent marketing case studies, from Nike and Nutella to Levi and Amazon, to explore whether marketing is evolving through AI or being replaced by it.
Meanwhile research last year revealed the economic impact the event has on Kendal and the nearby area.
Over £4million is brought into the economy thanks to visitors, supporters and the hundreds who take part to make an event that is now bigger than the famed Banff Film Festival happen.
“Banff is very different we get on very well with the people from Banff, with a cultural exchange going on every year.,” Steve says.
“Kendal is way bigger than Banff really and not many people know that but it’s, you know, for us it’s not a size thing necessarily.
“I think it’s just, we’re really proud of what we have as, you know, in the sense of the depth of content, the diversity of content. We’re always trying new things, not everything works every year but we’re certainly always learning and I think there’s always something for everybody at Kendal.”
Making his first appearance at the event will be TV presenter and writer Ben Fogle who Steve says has likened coming to Kendal as coming to Christmas.
The theme of the Kendal Mountain Film Festival this year is Hope.
If previous years are anything to go by there will be little need for Steve and the KMF team to keep their fingers crossed.
