Southside Festival Stars

This years Southside Festival is set to be bigger and better, with a full weekend of activities and a star studded headline acts.

This year it will be taking place on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 May in Queen’s Park. It will start with the starting parade and will make its way to the park, where the official opening will be done by a surprise VIP. This year there will stalls, and many activities for all age groups and many music stages. The festival will also have Festival Stars, a talent competition to find the future stars of the Southside. The judges for the Festival Stars 09 competition will be X Factor finalists the MacDonald Bros and Nikitta Agnes. Not only will they be judging the heats and finals but they will also be performing on the night of the Festival Stars Final. The pop duo of Craig (23) and Brian MacDonald who live in Ayr, (22) has taken the Scottish music scene by storm, since they burst into the public eye in 2006 as finalists in the monster British television X Factor. In the past two years, they have achieved spectacular success, with their first two albums, which was produced by former Bay City Roller Stuart “Woody” Wood. This sent them to number one and number two in the charts. Nikitta who sings R&B/Soul from Partick, Glasgow first came into the public eye in 2006 when she came sixth in the reality television series X-Factor. Nikitta then performed on the sell-out X-Factor Arena Tour with her fellow contestants, travelling all over Britain. Currently she is performing live all over the U.K. whilst writing and recording a collection of songs for her first album. She hopes to secure a professional recording contract. At a special pre launch held at Shawlands Academy they posed with other performers from the Shawlands Academy Dance Group who will be performing on the day. The B Boyz boys group and Shawlaydez the girls group. The dance club was set up 2 years ago by teacher Ms Abbasi and they currently have 20 children who take part. They perform Street Dance with a fusion of Latin and Bhangra. James McGuighan Southside Festival Committee Member said: ‘We are looking forward to this years festival which will be a lot bigger and better than last years.’ Head Teacher said: ‘Shawlands Academy is pleased to be supporting and involved in the build up to what will be a spectacular event.’ Nikitta said: ‘I’m really looking forward to performing at the Southside Festival this will be my first time that I’ve appeared and can’t wait.’ The MacDonald Bros said: ‘This is also our first time that we have attended. And we hope that the sun shines that weekend. We are hoping to get a good response from the southside people.’