Sheffield's notable Tramlines fun and frolics has beaten more than 200 other candidates to take this year's Best Metropolitan Festival award.
In keeping with our more democratic and interactive times, the victory came via a popular vote online and elsewhere, with several hundred thousand people taking part.
The victory topples London's Camden Crawl which came top in the first two award votes held last year and in 2009. Tramlines pulled ahead of other major contenders such as The Great Escape in Brighton and Bristol's Dot to Dot in the thriving world of indy festivals.
Tramlines' director Sarah Nulty says:
As you can imagine we are all over the moon. There are so many people behind the scenes working on Tramlines in their own time and totally for free. Getting industry recognition like this is exactly what they deserve.
We survive on sponsors money, help from Sheffield Council and obviously all the enthusiasm from people within Sheffield who attend it. We're already working on next year's festival and hope it will be just as successful.
Tramlines has only been going three years but has built up an audience of more than 150,000 people. James Drury, who heads the organisers of the vote, Festival Awards Ltd, says:
In only three years Tramlines has established itself as a force to be reckoned with. It's a great achievement to win this award in such a short space of time and is testament to the hard work of everyone involved.
The festival gets bigger and bigger - Sheffield is alive during Tramlines weekend with so many different types of music, laughter and entertainment and everyone is always in good spirits. Here's to 2012.
The metropolitan award recognises festivals which use cities infrastructure rather than vast muddy tracts of the English countryside. They are on the rise thanks to no need for camping (although for some, the noisome world of tents and mobile lavatories is the whole point), little threat from the weather and the ability to take place at any time of the year. Visitors get the chance to see lots of different players indoors as well as outside. Info on other Festival Awards winners is here.
Here are some clips of Tramlines from YouTube to enhance your northern morning. Stand by for Bill Cash MP on John Bright in the next Guardian Northerner post at 9am.
