10 of Britain’s best arts festivals for summer 2021

Last yr was one of cancellations, postponements and digital reinventions, however this summer many arts festivals are hoping to go forward. Most are planning an adaptable, hybrid format, with socially-distanced reside exhibits alongside on-line content material. Tickets are sometimes offered with Covid-proof ensures of refund or rollover, however examine before you purchase.

Brighton competition and fringe

Interactive artwork within the Pavilion Gardens, dancing within the streets and a pier-to-pier sound set up will span 14 miles of pebbly beachfront from Brighton to Worthing. Brighton’s month-long reside arts competition is adopted by its fringe programme. The competition presents distanced lunchtime concert events at Brighton Dome, an otherworldly night-walk round Shoreham port and a lantern-lit path with choral music and light-weight sculptures by means of Stanmer woods at nightfall. This yr’s visitor director, the poet Lemn Sissay, has helped schedule almost 100 exhibits and installations. One of a number of world premieres is Tenebrae: Lessons Learnt in Darkness, a transferring all-day spectacle impressed by the previous yr, at Brighton’s reopened Theatre Royal. And there’s a multi-sensory woodland from mid-May in Olafur Eliasson’s immersive The Forked Forest Path beneath the Fabrica gallery’s Regency church beams, and a fake-news-era War of the Worlds at Worthing theatre.
Festival 1-31 May, brightonfestival.org; fringe 28 May-27 June, brightonfringe.org

Estuary competition, Essex and Kent

The panorama across the broad Thames estuary is internet hosting cultural occasions in May, June and past. An ingenious, ecologically conscious lineup options murals, audio walks, immersive experiences, a floating sculpture off Southend pier and clocktowers that play threatened birds’ songs. Three wandering gamers will cease to argue for rebel within the face of the present local weather emergency, channelling the 1381 peasants’ revolt, which started in Essex. There’s open-air artwork in Chatham and two poets are shaping a collaborative native writing venture, describing life by the estuary since March 2020, in The Water Replies. In the autumn, there will probably be a site-specific efficiency about rising sea ranges within the tidal pool at Shoeburyness.
22 May-13 June, estuaryfestival.com

Coventry: UK City of Culture 2021

The UK’s newest City of Culture will probably be mixing reside and on-line occasions and making use of out of doors areas, such because the newly-regenerated Charterhouse heritage park. The theme of motion displays Coventry’s car-making heritage and can also be, within the political or emotional senses, epitomised by Coventry’s fashionable cathedral, constructed subsequent to the ruins of the outdated war-bombed cathedral. Celebrations will incorporate reside music, puppetry, dance, theatre, and a city-wide day of spectacle referred to as Coventry Moves. The metropolis will host the UK Asian movie competition and the Booker prize announcement. Terry Hall of the Specials is presenting three days of music in July and Coventry-born rapper Jay1 leads an August competition. In September, the Turner prize present opens at Coventry’s Herbert Art Gallery and the third Coventry biennial begins in October.
15 May till May 2022, coventry2021.co.uk

Bath competition and fringe

If you have been a fan of the Netflix regency raunch-fest Bridgerton, the town’s 73-year-old competition presents strolling excursions around the grand Georgian places the place a lot of the filming occurred. There are poetry readings within the 18th-century Assembly Rooms, concert events within the abbey and a night of water-themed a cappella beneath the floodlit columns and statues of the Roman Baths. This yr’s authors embody Rachel Clarke with a searing insider account of the Covid-struck NHS, Mel Giedroyc speaking about her debut novel, The Best Things, and Richard Osman with The Thursday Murder Club. A music festival-style weekend finale, rescheduled to August, options McFly, Billy Ocean, Fun Lovin’ Criminals and others enjoying on Bath Rec. Bath’s vigorous fringe, imaginatively tracing its roots to Roman-era competition sideshows, runs from late May.
Festival 17-24 May, bathfestivals.org.uk; fringe 28 May-13 June, bathfringe.co.uk; finale 7-8 August

Buxton worldwide competition and fringe

The Peak District spa city has drawn worldwide crowds to the sq. outdoors its ornate Edwardian opera home for the final 40 summers. This July, the white-and-gold auditorium will open to audiences for the primary time in additional than a yr to placed on a musical and 4 operas, together with Handel’s Acis and Galatea. Buxton’s flower-basketed colonnades and gardens make an idyllic setting for a competition. The chandelier-hung Buxton Crescent Hotel opened late last year, resurrecting a grand Georgian spa; its 18th-century ballroom turns into a brand new venue for literary occasions and musical salons. Authors embody Cumbrian shepherd James Rebanks and Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. A sequence of competition walks discover the city’s wildlife, structure or hyperlinks with Vera Brittain (Testament of Youth memoirist). There’s a fringe, too, that includes music and mocktails within the Serpentine Community Garden or jazz, poetry and artwork on the Green Man Gallery.
Festival 8-25 July, buxtonfestival.co.uk; fringe 7-25 July, buxtonfringe.org.uk

Edinburgh competition and Edinburgh fringe

The Edinburgh fringe offered greater than 3 million tickets in 2019, overshadowing the guardian occasion it grew up round. Having retreated on-line in 2020, this yr’s predominant competition gave the primary details of live and streamed performances on 13 April, with a full programme and tickets obtainable from June. New out of doors venues embody pavilions among the many little lakes and lime avenues of Edinburgh Park and lined live performance levels in a college quad. The large parallel books competition is relocating, for 2021, to Edinburgh College of Art. This August’s fringe will go forward in some type, however remains to be deciding how a lot will probably be reside and the way a lot digital. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who carried out her present Fleabag right here in 2013, is the Fringe Society’s first president. She describes the perimeter as a spot the place the connection between audiences and artists is “feverishly consummated, sometimes with great success, sometimes with awkward fumbles behind an inflatable cow, but always with unbridled passion and creativity.”
Festival 7-29 August, eif.co.uk; fringe 6-30 August, edfringe.com; ebook competition 14-30 August, edbookfest.co.uk

Greenwich + Docklands worldwide competition

London’s largest competition of free out of doors performances celebrated its twenty fifth anniversary final yr – with socially-distanced exhibits – and was the primary main reside arts festivals to go forward. The competition returns in late summer with a various programme of theatre and spectacle. Jeanefer Jean-Charles’s dance piece Black Victorians explores complicated black tales from pre-Windrush Britain, whereas Flemish firm de Roovers is staging an immersive manufacturing, Blue Remembered Hills, in a secret location. Street artwork, installations and exhibits will probably be uniting Woolwich and North Woolwich communities throughout the river with the slogan Healing Together.
27 Aug-11 Sept, festival.org

Frome competition, Somerset

(*10*)

Quirky cobbled alleyways with streams down the center, buzzing markets with a carnival ambiance, indie outlets and cafes, 4 arts venues and a legendary sense of neighborhood all imply bohemian Frome is nicely positioned to host a cracking competition. The 2021 competition consists of comedy from Reginald D Hunter on the Memorial theatre, music by The Lightning Seeds, and poet John Hegley on the Masonic Hall. Outdoor venues embody an amphitheatre with nightly exhibits, gigs within the courtyard of an outdated silk mill, and a lakeside glamping web site at Marston park. The competition was on account of have fun its twentieth birthday in 2020 and marks the anniversary this yr with an exhibition of memorabilia at Rook Lane Arts. Several fashionable annual options are again: backyard openings, guided walks, an artwork path – and nice meals. Frome’s bars and bakeries serve every thing from watermelon margaritas to melt-in-the-mouth blackcurrant muffins made with native natural jersey cream.
2 -11 July, fromefestival.co.uk

DevaFest, Cheshire

This is a comparatively new family-friendly mashup of native meals and old style music, parades and performances at Chester Lakes, three miles south of the Roman metropolis (Deva is the Latin identify for Chester). Fairground rides and shuttle buses are included within the ticket worth. Friday can have a retro vibe with hands-in-the-air dance anthems, Saturday is dress-up Pirate Day and has Sophie Ellis-Bextor performing and Sunday’s finale consists of Scouting for Girls. Nearby Chester is billing itself as the best open-air metropolis with expanded pedestrian areas and alfresco occasions. Cultural hub Storyhouse is planning an prolonged open-air theatre season in Grosvenor park and out of doors cinema with Chester’s gothic cathedral within the background. There’s additionally the Just So festival for children within the landscaped Rode Hall property.
13 – 15 August, devafest.co.uk

The Green Gathering, Monmouthshire