THE Purbeck Valley Folk Festival has been nominated in three categories at the prestigious UK Festival Awards 2017.

The popular festival held every August near Corfe Castle, is competing for Best Small Festival, Best Family Festival and Grass Roots Festival Award.

This year saw a bumper weekend of headline acts with performances from Badly Drawn Boy, Turin Brakes, Ben Ottewell from Gomez and Michele Stodart from The Magic Numbers.

This Is The Kit, Martha Tilston, Kathryn Williams and The Ben Waters Band also performed.

Organiser, Catherine Burke says: “I love this festival because we are musicians. There is so much brilliant music, a fabulous venue at Purbeck Valley Farm and best of all, a wonderful feeling among people who are here to celebrate the music. We had such a brilliant festival this year and it was probably our best yet.

Catherine added: “We had a lot of comments telling us to not grow any bigger. Don’t worry, we have no plans to. We don’t need awards to tell us what a lovely festival we have, but we’re delighted to have been nominated for three different awards at the UK Festival Awards this year.”

Tickets for the 2018 festival go on sale on Friday, October 27. Headline acts will be announced over the coming months.