YORK’S Festival of Remembrance is moving to a new venue this autumn.

The annual fundraising event for the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal is leaving its traditional home at York Barbican and will be staged instead in the auditorium at Manor CE Academy in Millfield Lane, Nether Poppleton.

Producer Sandie Dunleavy said she believed taking the event to a different part of the city would attract people who wouldn’t necessarily go to the Barbican.

She said the school also had a thriving and sizeable Cadet Force, which would assist with the logistics of the event.

She said the festival would take place at 4pm on Sunday, November 3 and would feature the Band of the Yorkshire Regiment with female singers, plus York’s “busiest singer and choir leader”, Jessa Liversidge, who would be singing a selection of songs including ‘On My Own’, ‘Let There be Peace on Earth’ and ‘Here’s to the Heroes’.

The event would also feature an Andrews Sisters Tribute act singing ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’ and ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’, musician Jasmine Evans would perform ‘Victor’s Tale’, another musician Laura Skyers would play Morricone’s ‘La Califfa’, another work from the pen of Rossano Galante, and Jessa would be involved in a Last Night of the Proms style finale.

She said people could obtain tickets, priced at £10, by emailing denisetrbl@yahoo.co.uk, by writing to 2 Oxtoby Court York YO10 4GA, enclosing a cheque payable to RBL York Branch, or by making a card payment through Martin Rowley & Sons on 01904 593096.

Sandie added that the festival’s annual slot at York Barbican had never been free. “On the contrary, it was expensive,” she claimed.

York-based groups, clubs and community organisations can have a concessionary day’s hire of the Barbican as part of a City of York Council lease agreement with its operators, SMG.

The council said in February that it was interested in hearing from organisations which would like to take up one of the two opportunities available in 2020 and, to be eligible, proposed events should provide activities or entertainment that appealed to the widest cross-section of the local community and be open and accessible to all with no restricted access.

It said organisations would not have to pay charges for backstage and front of house facilities, technical equipment, front of house management or stewarding, but the concession did not cover other items or facilities such as box office and credit card commission, marketing and additional staff for duties such as loading and unloading production equipment.