Basingstoke Festival

There’s fun for all the family at this year’s Basingstoke Festival. 
The annual arts festival, in its ninth year, will showcase the best of the arts
locally, nationally and internationally - from music to dance, visual art to
theatre, you will ‘discover art in unusual places in unusual times’. 

On Friday the 25 June at 5pm, Bollywood Brass Band and Kala
The Arts kickstart the weekend with a procession through Basingstoke town.  The procession starts at Cross Street and
finishing at the Amphitheatre next to Festival Place where the evening of music
and dance continues with Sounds of the Earth, Pablo Sonnaillon and Sushmita
Pati.

Across the first weekend, you will find acts such as Urban
Astronaut from Highly Sprung Theatre Company that combines storytelling with
stunning design and an aerial performance, using a unique travelling flying
machine that suspends the performer 20 feet in the air. In addition, The
JukeBoxes will also be bringing to life some of our favourite celebrity pop
stars including The Beatles and Miley Cyrus using props, masks, puppets and a
terrible selection of wigs. You can also catch Proteus Youth Theatre in their
production of Grimm Tales; bringing together over 45 young people from across
the borough, aged between 8-18, Proteus Youth Theatre bring their trademark wit
and vibrant flair for storytelling to this original production of famous fairy
tales from across history.

The festival continues into the following weekend (Saturday
3 and 4 July) where artists such as Autin Dance Theatre present Out of the
Blue, an outdoor physical theatre performance featuring a largescale Sea Giant
Puppet operated by five puppeteers and a female contemporary dancer, inspired
by the themes of the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis. Mimbre
Acrobats will return to the festival with their quirky show Lifted, a
breathtaking and highly-skilled acrobatic piece of performance art, and children
and their families will also be invited to look through the windows and doors
of My House, a circus theatre experience from Apocalyptic Circus.

Emergency Exit Arts (EEA) will be presenting the Recovery
Poems during the closing weekend. Through talking and listening to communities,
artists Robert Montgomery and Deanne Rodger have created an inspiring light
poem that will visit Basingstoke at the end of the festival.

These are only a few examples of the performances you can
see during Basingstoke Festival. Local artists and organisations including
Proteus, Scratchbuilt Productions, Pumpkin Pantos and Junk Jodie Arts and
Crafts will also be featured in the programme highlighting the best of arts and
culture Basingstoke has to offer. You may also want to check out the artwork
produced by Queen Mary’s College students which is on display in Festival Place
or get tickets for the Petite School of Dancing performing at The Haymarket
Theatre.

You can find the full programme on the website www.basingstokefestival.co.uk.

The packed programme also
features a series of outdoor cinema screenings showing popular movies in a
brand-new picturesque location. The programme will include films such as Frozen
2, Back to the Future and The Greatest Showman plus many more!

To ensure Basingstoke Festival
is COVID-secure and to keep audiences and performers safe, events may be
ticketed; these will be available via the website.
For all the information for how we’re keeping you safe during Basingstoke
Festival, please go to https://www.basingstokefestival.co.uk/keepingyousafe/.

Notes:

Basingstoke Festival is a partner
in Without Walls, working with festivals and artists and bringing fantastic
outdoor arts to people in towns and cities across the UK. More here: www.withoutwalls.org.uk

Basingstoke Festival is subsidised
by Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council.

There’s fun for all the family at this year’s Basingstoke Festival. 
The annual arts festival, in its ninth year, will showcase the best of the arts
locally, nationally and internationally - from music to dance, visual art to
theatre, you will ‘discover art in unusual places in unusual times’.