Head to Weston-super-Mare this weekend as Theatre Orchard’s Whirligig Festival of Outdoor Arts returns with a jam-packed, bumper package of seaside spectacles! The Friday Night Out line-up includes Autin Dance Theatre, Simple Cypher, Pirates of the Carabina, and Puppets with Guts. Then tomorrow join the Saturday Fiesta featuring: Etta Ermini Dance Theatre & Van Huynh Co, BinCats Circus, Ramshacklicious, James Wilton Dance, Stefano di Renzo, Motionhouse, Simple Cypher, Dizzy O Dare, and Autin Dance Theatre. On Sunday you can see Emily Brown Dance and Jack Dean & Company in the Sunny Sunday Afternoon.
For the final weekend of Greenwich+Docklands International Festival in London, Balsam by Laika & Zefiro Torna takes over building 41 at Woolwich Royal Arsenal’s Riverside. In this sensory, immersive, theatrical adventure, live music combines with the creation of aromatic potions and elixirs, conjuring up a magical world of healing and calm. Each evening at 8.30pm the spectacular light installation Borealis will shine out echoing the awe-inspiring brilliance of the Northern Lights. Also, see De Roovers’ production of Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills in the wastelands of Thamesmead. This outdoor, site-specific production takes audiences on a journey to a hidden landscape, officially closed to the public for more than a century.
GDIF’s Healing Together, a two-day programme of street arts, performance, installation, dance and spectacle, celebrating community resilience, the environment and healing, runs across the weekend. The programme includes Walk the Plank’s Reflection Gardens, and the massive daytime festival programme on Saturday includes StopGap Dance, Just Us Dance, Just More Productions, Emergency Exit Arts’ ‘Recovery Poems’, Kaleider, LAStheatre, Ascension Dance, Initiative.dkf, Jason Singh’s ‘The Hidden Music of Trees’, Bee-ology, Highly Sprung, Nikki Charlesworth’s ‘What Happened to You’ and Strong Lady Productions.
See streets and venues in central Mansfield town buzzing and bustling with knock-your-socks-off outdoor performances and events at First Art’s Full Shebang Festival tomorrow. Don’t miss Justice in Motion, Joli Vyann, Mimbre, Avanti Display, Fully Booked Theatre, Symoné, Back Chat Brass, and Handmade Theatre.
For a family-friendly festival day full of music, dance, spoken word, crafts, and theatre, look no further than Fluid Motion’s All in the Mind Festival tomorrow in Glebe Gardens, Basingstoke. Be sure to catch Fluid Motion, Hocus Pocus Theatre, Sarah Thomas-Lane, A Bird in the Hand Theatre, and Bicycle Boy.
Walk the Plank and the British Science Festival 2021 are turning their attention to the human body, a place of wonder and enquiry, for BODY this weekend at Guy Harlings Garden next to Chelmsford Cathedral. Inspired by anatomical science, BODY is an outdoor immersive journey through six different body zones mixing human biology with light, special effects, sound and fire.
Tomorrow The Civic Barnsley’s annual Garden Party takes place in Mandela Gardens. Enjoy live performances in the open air including Kapow’s Grow, Morgan & West with The Three Musketeers!, and Tamar & Jo with Doorstep Dances.
Coming up next in Coventry City of Culture’s programme of events is Faith, a 24-hour invitation to explore life’s big questions through the beliefs of people of faith, and of non-religious world views, through music, theatre, installation, and ritual. Throughout Saturday, a visual and theatrical tapestry will be created in locations across the city and online, finishing in an extraordinary Ceremony of Light in the evening.
b-side festival returns to the Isle of Portland with four days of brand new artworks you won’t see anywhere else. Head there this weekend to see spectacular projections on ancient castles, ride the No 1 bus like never before, get a make over in the unnatural beauty parlour, take a tour of a secret city where daily life is stranger than fiction – join in with, witness and experience some remarkable events and artworks inspired by the fascinating island.
Head to Brighton Open Air Theatre this weekend for Julius Caesar and The Hound of the Baskervilles. Join The HandleBards all-female troupe at Strawberry Hill House on Sunday for their bicycle-powered, farcical production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The Three Inch Fools are visiting Southwark Cathedral, Charterhouse Heritage Park, Lyddington Village Green, and Stourhead National Trust this weekend with their productions of Robin Hood and Romeo and Juliet.
The Nairn Book and Arts Festival concludes this weekend in the Scottish Highlands. On Saturday Oceanallover present a visual poetry performance and music event involving dancers, musicians, and sculptural costume. Then on Sunday see STORM, an outdoor spectacle to mark Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters from Edinburgh-based Vision Mechanics.
This weekend marks the beginning of Saltaire Festival, featuring the popular Open Gardens trail, giving visitors the opportunity to explore the village and its history through its current residents. Yards and gardens will host works by local sculptors, and there will be pop-up and surprise events in homes around the village, with children’s and family activities in the village and Roberts Park.
Season for Change’s What Shall We Build Here, a festival of art, climate and community at Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios in Aldgate East, in parks across east London and in your local supermarket, runs across the weekend. Take part in events including: a sensory workshop exploring food, climate and colonialism with Kaajal Modi, a playful, gentle evening of creative workshops and installations exploring ecological grief by Aisha Mirza & Aaks B, and an undercover audio tour of your local supermarket by Alicja Rogalska about the politics of food production, distribution and consumption.
Two weeks of live music, art workshops and outdoor events begin tomorrow for Bicester Festival. This year’s theme of Sea Change/See Change reflects on all the big environmental and social changes being witnessed today and how we express that shared experience.
Bell Square presents Dan Archer’s We Are Watching, a monumental eye made up of thousands of portraits, flying high above cities on a flag the size of a 10-storey building, at Lampton Park today and tomorrow.
New Mills Festival has announced the return of the Festival Art Trail and Big Weekend, which will see over a hundred and fifty artists from across the UK and abroad displaying their work across the town from today until 26 Sep. This year more than seventy local businesses will host artists’ work in their windows and premises.
Visit Delights of the Garden in Eastbourne this weekend, a unique opportunity to explore the seven allotments managed by Gather Collective and discover the art trail with a range of works from members of Compass Community Arts, children from Blackberry Buzzard, Amberstone Artists and individual artists. Works include painting, drawing, prints, sculpture and temporary interventions inspired by the allotments and the natural environment.
Looking further afield, Circusstad Festival in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Fluxus Festival in Kaunas, Lithuania, and FiraTàrrega in Spain, all run this weekend.
