Inside Out Dorset 2025 Reveals Programme of Free International Outdoor Performance

The 2025 Inside Out Dorset Festival will run from Friday 12 to Sunday 21 September. Over two weekends, events will take place at iconic Corfe Castle, the coastal towns of Christchurch and Weymouth, Moors Valley Country Park and Forest, one of Dorset’s most popular tourist destinations and, for the first time, Yeovil in Somerset.

This year, Inside Out Dorset is involved in three major national projects –Nature Calling, Beach of Dreams and River of Hope.

Three local rivers - the Stour, the Avon and the Allen - are the inspiration for River of Hope, a spectacular large-scale installation in Christchurch where 60 specially-created flags will fly on the Quay from 12 to 15 September. Artist Heidi Steller and poet Matt West have worked with local young people to respond to the rivers and create flags and poetry. Films will be shown in a shipping container on the site and there will be accompanying music by Dorset-based rapper and songwriter Isaiah Dreads.

This event is the culmination of a national programme about climate change, young people’s worries and mental health run by Thames Festival Trust. River of Hope is taking place in seven UK locations as well as in France and Ethiopia. A documentary about the project is in the planning.

In her latest immersive sound-work, Canopy, Dorset-based Lorna Rees of Gobbledegook Theatre turns her attention to trees, tree-gazing and eco-futurism. From 13 to 21 September, 24 listening stations resembling giant seed pods are suspended in the trees of Forestry England’s Moors Valley Country Park and Forest. They create a trail, each one marked on a map and each housing its own sound world. Lorna has worked with arborists, scientists, artists, folk musicians and local communities to consider the questions. What makes a forest? Who is a forest for? Costumed animateurs send the audiences on their way and the trail becomes a joyful game of finding and listening. Canopy premieres at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire in August.

13 and 14 September sees the unveiling in Yeovil of Radical Ritual’s enormous temporary artwork Consequences - a monumental new mythical creature. Inspired by the childhood game, multiple participants will contribute to its creation without seeing the contributions that have come before their own. The 30 by 40 metre artwork will be digitally created from original drawings made from chalk and coloured with inks and dyes taken from local flora. The unveiling will be accompanied by music, poetry and ritual. Poet Louisa Adjoa Parker’s This patch of land, inspired by the Dorset National Landscape, will form part of a soundtrack by Douglas Dare along with readings by local people.

Fascinated by the enduring mystery of the Cerne Abbas giant, Radical Ritual artistic director Becca Gill and a team of writers and artists, Sita Brahmachari, Nick Hayes and Grace Emily Manning, have worked with people from South Somerset and Dorset in this investigation of folk traditions, collaborative storytelling and surrealist art-making (the Surrealists used the game of Consequences as a creative tool).

The Consequences giant will first be revealed online during a gathering at the Cerne Abbas giant. It then opens to the public in Inside Out Dorset, first in Yeovil on 13 and 14 September and then in Corfe Castle on 20 and 21 September. Commissioned by Dorset National Landscape, this event is part of Nature Calling, a National Landscapes Association project where Activate is the Executive Creative Producer nationally.

Weymouth on 19 and 20 September is the location for site-specific promenade performance Sonnet of Samsara, a collaboration between Attakkalari, a dance company from Bengaluru, India and UK arts charity Kinetika, known for its community-led silk design and public spectacles. Responding to the history and character of its Weymouth seafront site, Sonnet of Samsara weaves together the myths, memories and aspirations of local communities. Hand-painted pennants, inspired by these collective stories, are carried in a procession, transforming at intervals into short performances. The journey culminates in a ritual finale, blending Kalarippayattu, contemporary dance, and animated physical gestures, transforming the site into a vibrant performance arena. Three dancers from Attakkalari will come to Dorset to be part of the performance.

Sonnet of Samsara is part of Beach of Dreams, a UK-wide coastal arts festival exploring the unique heritage, cultures and futures of our coastlines in the face of the climate emergency. It is also sponsored by We Are Weymouth as part of their Dusk Til Dark programme and the Portland and Weymouth Towns of Culture.

On 20 & 21 September, Consequences will be unveiled at Corfe Castle, one of the most iconic locations in Dorset managed by the National Trust. This event will be the culmination of the entire Nature Calling project.

Also part of the Corfe Castle weekend on 20 & 21 September is a programme of performance and contemporary circus from Catalonia. Continuing Inside Out Dorset’s ongoing relationship with the region, these hugely-skilful artists cast their magic around the grassy slopes of this 1000-year-old ruin and at various locations throughout the village.

In Idiòfona, Joan Català is helped by the audience to conjure up a giant musical instrument from strings and iron poles of different lengths, creating cascades of sounds from the vibrations. An ode to the pleasure of shared experience, it’s an odyssey of history, memory, stubbornness and poetry.

We Fear by Eva Marichalar-Freixa and Jordi Duran i Roldós, in collaboration with Dorsetborn, is an open research project on the nature of fear. A site-specific promenade piece for Sandy Hill Arts, audiences are guided through three artistic installations about intimacy, vulnerability, transformation and beauty, about being together and alone at the same time.

Cie D’es Tro’s Poi sets the world spinning as charismatic performer Guillem Vizcaino lives the story of a man trapped since his rural childhood by the gyroscopic effect of a spinning top. Endless turning, spinning, juggling and balancing to a traditional Catalan soundtrack of strings and percussion, Poi is a hypnotic delight of expert object manipulation.

Finally, Arrels by Toc de Fusta is a family-friendly participatory installation, a playful experience with 20 interactive games and structures that serve as creative reinterpretations of specific cultural traditions from around the world, sharing not only their essence but also their history and character.

Inside Out Dorset’s Co-Artistic Directors Kate Wood, also director of Activate, and Bill Gee, said: “We are really looking forward to welcoming excellent artists from the UK, Europe and India to the Inside Out Dorset festival in September - and to meeting many of our appreciative audiences. This Festival, more than any other, has been creatively made with the active collaboration of hundreds of people from Dorset, Hampshire and South Somerset, engaging with the landscapes and the themes of the art.

We are so grateful to our funders who have invested in these really important cultural programmes. It makes it possible for us to present extraordinary events in extraordinary places, distinctive to this county. And to make them accessible to a wide and diverse audience. That has always been our focus - we believe anything is possible and everyone is invited.”

An Arts Council England spokesperson said: “We’re proud to invest in Activate Performing Arts’ work to create live experiences shaped by people and place. It’s fantastic to see Inside Out Dorset go from strength to strength, attracting national and international talent to the area. It’s thanks to public funding we’re able to support community-led festivals and events all across England — because everyone, everywhere deserves to access high-quality creativity and culture on their doorstep.”