SHUTE Festival, a celebration of books, ideas and music, based in the little village near Honiton, began in 2016, but now, at the end of its tenth year, the organisers said goodbye. In their pre-Christmas announcement Sam Knights and Bijan Omrani say: “It is hard to believe that a decade has gone by since we flung open the doors of Shute Festival at St Michael’s Church in our tiny hamlet in East Devon.

“None of us founders – Sam Knights, Bijan Omrani and Paddy Magrane – had ever run a festival before and that surely helped in taking the plunge! But we collectively loved books, ideas, performance and most of all bringing people together – speakers came and audiences too. There are too many highlights to individually mention names but we are beyond proud of what we brought to Shute and to the surrounding area.

“We walked in the extraordinary landscapes of this area, visited our 1000 year old ancient oak a number of times, listened to musical performances from sitar to string quartets, watched films and spoke to an artist on death row in Arkansas by phone after the film about his life, saw the magnificent short film about the Macbeth performance in Shute which went so horribly wrong it made the New York Times, and engaged with hundreds of speakers and books. Each event was unique and provoked after ripples which continued far beyond.”

Sam and Bijan are bringing the festival to a close, but proud to say that the cultural environment in the area is strong: “We have a wonderful and collaborative community of organisations and individuals who are all programming in this area. Over the years we have worked with a number of these, not least our fantastic independent Archway Bookshop, the Marine Theatre, Shute Community Primary School, The Woodroffe School, St Andrews Church Colyton, Turn Lyme Green, the Alexandra Hotel and of course our gem of a medieval church St Michael’s in Shute. We are also very grateful to all of our sponsors over the years and to Postscript Books for its 2025 support. So walks, talks, film, theatre, and music will continue all around, and individually we will be supporting in any way we can.”