Festival Des Vieilles Charrues

Festivalinformatie

The Vieilles Charrues festival is an annual festival of contemporary music, programmed over four days on the third weekend of July in the town of Carhaix-Plouguer, in Finistère. The festival is often referred to as "les Charrues", especially on social networks.

Created in 1992 in the neighbouring town of Landeleau, the festival has offered an eclectic programme since its creation. Despite the geographical location of the festival in a relatively isolated region1, its success can be explained by the fact that the Vieilles Charrues have been able to attract almost all the artists touring Europe in July, in a wide range of styles including pop, rock, electro, hip-hop, chanson, world, local folklore, and by mixing headliners and discoveries. The attendance record was reached in 2017, with 280,000 festival-goers over four days, including 222,000 paid admissions and 6,800 volunteers.

Les Vieilles Charrues is organised by the eponymous association (the name is a nod to the Vieux Gréements gathering in Brest), which devotes part of its financial year to the development of the associative and cultural fabric of Central Brittany, with a view to promoting the Breton language.

From 1996 to 2013, the Tremplin des Jeunes Charrues scheme enabled hundreds of young artists from Western France to perform on the local stages of the musical springboard and, for the winners, on one of the festival stages. Since 2014, the Label Charrues (a support system for emerging Breton artists) has been selecting regional artists upstream to accompany them until they are programmed at the festival.