Whitby to host Yorkshire Fossil Festival for first time - here's what's going on over the weekend

The festival, which runs over June 10 and 11, will celebrate the 200th birthday of Whitby Museum, and the historic venue will invite festival-goers behind the scenes for a special after-hours Night at the Museum.

This one-off event, on the Saturday, will feature science talks and performance art created specially for the spectacular heritage venue, and will conclude with a mass singalong of festival co-organiser Dr Liam Herringshaw’s palae-oke reworking of disco classic I Will Survive.

It will also host talks by a couple, Sally and Neville Hollingworth, who discovered an Ice Age mammoth graveyard in Wiltshire and later featured on a BBC documentary, Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard, hosted by naturalist Sir David Attenborough.

They will be displaying some of their amazing finds for the first time at the festival.

Dinosaur expert Dr Susannah Maidment from the Natural History Museum will be telling mega-stories about Stegosaurus.

Festival highlights

Saturday on the Streets (June 10) will see the festival take over as much of Whitby as possible from 10am to 4pm, with ringmaster Steve Cousins, also known as The Rock Showman, and his team of Let's Circus performers at Dock End, and lots to see and do at Whitby Museum and in Pannett Park.

Sunday Funday (June 11) will be a party in the park, as the whole festival – incuding the circus – moves to Pannett Park and Whitby Museum, for a fun-packed family day of free, fossil-flavoured fun, from 10am to 4pm.

Throughout the festival, visitors will also get the chance to see a big old log in Whitby Museum, as the world's largest specimen of Whitby jet goes on display for the weekend, courtesy of the Museum of Whitby Jet.

A new Love Exploring quiz game has been created specially for the festival, bringing an array of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures to Whitby. Many have special links to the town, and players will use a map to track them across Whitby, testing their fossil knowledge as they do so.

Steve Cousins, The Rock Showman, was the ebullient and hugely popular master of ceremonies of last year’s festival, at Scarborough Spa, and will return this year as festival co-director. Both days of the festival will feature free, family entertainment by international artists from Australia, Mexico, Japan and India, alongside local performers: a vibrant mix of music, circus, puppetry, and street theatre popping up across Whitby over the weekend.

Dr Rebecca Bennion, a Whitby palaeontologist who is a creative producer of this year’s festival, said: "It is going to be a fantastic opportunity for people of all ages to celebrate the town's fossil heritage and meet world-leading experts.”

Roger Osborne, curator of geology at Whitby Museum, was “thrilled” to be celebrating the museum’s bicentenary with the festival and said: “Whitby is world famous for its ammonite fossils, and the museum has one of the best collections anywhere.

"Our new display shows them off in the best way possible.”

The 2023 Yorkshire Fossil Festival is organised by Whitby Museum, Scarborough Museums and Galleries, and Let's Circus, with funding from Arts Council England, the Normanby Trust, the Palaeontological Association, the Geologists’ Association and the Yorkshire Geological Society.

Visit: https://yorkshirefossilfestival.co.uk for more.