BalticFest will bring DJs, live music & art to the Baltic this weekend, and it's free!

Balticfest is a two-day free festival featuring DJs, live music and art will be taking over the Baltic Triangle this weekend, 5th and 6th August 2023.

Balticfest is returning for its third year, with new venues added to old favourites, plus some new artists bringing music the full length of Jamaica Street and over into Cains Brewery Village.

Ivan Thunders, co-founder of Coffee & Turntables, says they first launched the festival during the pandemic to give people something fun to get involved in over lockdown.

It proved such a hit that it made sense to keep it going and grow it.

“We started in May 2021 when there was nothing going on and people were bored,” he explains. “We realised there were some restrictions, you could only have live music outdoors at the time and people had to be social distanced, but we thought we could still work with that to do a festival.

BalticFest - The Guide Liverpool — R Social at Red Brick Market is one of the new Balticfest venues

“So we had some DJs playing outdoors, and we had live acoustic music outside in two different venues that aren’t around anymore. It was free, there was good music and an amazing vibe so we decided to repeat that but in a different format last year, and again this year with some new venues added.”

Balticfest 2023 will be on from 11am to 5pm on Saturday and Sunday, bringing together live music, DJs and spoken word from Cath Holland at various venues, with an art exhibition at Baltic Creative on both days, and a record fair there run by Dead Air Records.

“Last year we hired out the sheds in the Baltic Creative building which is a really good space for exhibitions and we invited local artists to showcase their work for free and hopefully sell some,” adds Ivan.

“We’ll be doing that again, and we’ll also have a record fair as well on the Sunday. I do two all-dayer events in the Baltic every year and I always invite someone to sell records which works well. It’s about community, supporting each other, helping new businesses and also bringing more people to the venues.”

New venues for this year include R Social at Red Brick Market in Cains Brewery Village and the Baltic Hotel.

“We’re going to set up by the window of the Duck & Swagger pub with speakers outside and create a nice environment there,” says Ivan. “The idea is to have music at both ends of Jamaica Street, so you come from town and there’s music coming out of the Baltic Hotel and then you carry on down the street and there’s music outside 92 Degrees, so it connects the whole area.”