We’re delighted to announce that Tramlines has been named as the Best UK Metropolitan Festival at the UK Festival Awards, which were held in London last night.

This is the third year of the Best Metropolitan Festival award category, with London’s Camden Crawl event taking the title in the first two years. The award category is for festivals that use the existing infrastructure of a town or city’s venues, and other events nominated in the category this year were The Great Escape (Brighton), Dot to Dot (Bristol/Nottingham/Manchester) and The Camden Crawl. Illustrious competition!

Tramlines Festival is also only in its third year, and already attracts an audience of over 150,000.

Festival Director Sarah Nulty said:

“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.”

Metropolitan festivals are growing thanks to their flexibility: very little threat from the weather, no need to camp and the ability to hold them at any time of the year. The UK Festival Awards note that such festivals give people a chance to see multiple acts indoors and out.

James Drury, Managing Director of Festival Awards Ltd, said:

“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.”

Councillor Julie Dore, Leader of Sheffield City Council added:

“What fantastic news for the city! Tramlines is a credit to Sheffield. The people behind it work tirelessly all year round to deliver an amazing weekend and this award is well deserved. The festival gets bigger and bigger and is a fantastic success story. I am very proud of the show the city puts on. Sheffield is alive during Tramlines weekend with so many different types of music, laughter and entertainment and everyone is always in good spirits, including me and my family. Here’s to 2012.”

It was a good night all round for independent events, as they took the majority of the gongs at this year’s awards. Here’s the full list of winners.