Bloomsbury Festival Announces 2023 Programme

The Bloomsbury Festival has announced their full programme of shows, exhibitions, events, concerts, walks and talks in the 2023 programme with the theme ‘Grow’. The festival includes free events, family-focused activities, exhibitions and performances created to showcase artists, culture, and community.

Alongside a programme of performance, exhibitions and literature, highlights from the festival include:

A Street Food & Flower Market on Store Street opens the festival. This outdoor event features pop-up entertainment from buskers, local dance groups and performers bringing the street to life. The market will include a curated offering of street food with a global range of stalls, as well as local restaurants and shops taking part in the fun.

A three-day Discovery Hub will take over Holborn Library for families and schools with an exciting mix of creative and cutting-edge science activities from leading local universities and institutions. Discovery activities and exhibitions include a VR drone take-off experience, a creative exhibition of 50 avocado sculptures and the greenest popcorn you may ever eat made using hydrogen fuel cells.

A series of lunchtime concerts providing a platform for emerging talent, featuring free recitals and performances throughout the week from up-and-coming musicians including pianists, singers, string and woodwind players.

A series of theatre productions selected during the festival’s annual competition for emerging writers and theatre-makers. The five winners:

• Lucy Bailey’s How To Run Away is the dirty, mucky, sweaty second cousin to Eat, Pray, Love telling of the highs, lows, and life lessons of moving halfway across the world with brutal honesty and a ton of belly dancing in the aisles. 
• Goodgirl by Parbati Chaudhury is a dance-theatre world fusing real stories and pop culture to explore the impact of cultural expectations, conditioning, and prejudice on the lives of South Asian women and girls. 
• Rowenna Mortimer’s The Morphea is a harsh, fairytale-esque allegory for the power and possibilities of change taking us on a journey through Morphea’s quest to save her canal home as rents rise, homes are lost, and her friends begin to mysteriously disappear.
• Lizzie Milton with Intransigent Lines, exploring childhood experiences of neurodiversity told through contrasting worlds above and below the sea drawing on Celtic selkie myth storytelling traditions to create a new mythos for the neurodivergent community.
• New Wave Radio Drama Petrichor by Theo Hristov explores the whirlwind falling in love of two seemingly polar opposite seventeen-year-olds after meeting at a warehouse rave in Peckham.

This year sees the introduction of two new major partnerships with CityLit which provides adult education courses and Holborn Library. CityLit will host discussions and workshops as part of their Mental Wealth Festival, a forum for informative, challenging, and inspiring events. There will also be a series of productions in their John Lyon’s Theatre. Holborn Library will host The Bloomsbury Festival Discovery Hub, a free three-day mix of science, art and creativity for schools, families and the general public around the central theme of growth which is also in partnership with Camden Council Library services.

Festival Director Rosemary Richards has said “Our New Wave and emerging artist opportunities have become a central part of the festival over the last few years alongside our more familiar programme of music, theatre, exhibitions and literature. It’s always great to offer a platform to upcoming talent and this year we have an added bonus – we’ve been creating a New Bloomsbury Set of 10 talented young people from the Bloomsbury area, who have been setting their mark on the cultural life of Bloomsbury against the backdrop of the Bloomsbury Group of a century ago and the literary and garden history of the area.  They and their contemporaries are the Bloomsbury of today and tomorrow – culturally diverse, brimming with new ideas and bringing energy, humour and a new slant on the area’s cultural heritage.”

Festival Patron Her Grace The Duchess of Bedford “Bloomsbury Festival is many things, an artistic enterprise, a community celebration of creativity centred on the square mile of Bloomsbury.  The lifeblood of the festival is in the energy and the enthusiasm of so many artists, musicians, academics, scientists, community groups and creative people in the area. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the team, the festival has expanded to become more than a ten-day event in October.  It was a pleasure to be able to host part of the music trail in February with Hong Kong origin flautist Karen Wong and enjoy all the other events the evening offered. In June, we hosted the judging panel for the art competition.  It is always exciting to see the new talent emerging from our art schools and universities, and when you look at the entries, we received it really does feel like we are seeing the professional artists of tomorrow.”

The Bloomsbury Festival will run from 13-22 October

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