Motionhouse dance-circus group, Autin Dance Theatre and an interactive singalong cinema experience are all confirmed as key acts for Peterborough Celebrates Festival in May.
Peterborough Celebrates Festival is a three-day free-to-attend, community and feel good, family-friendly festival at Ferry Meadows that will bring together and celebrate everything great about Peterborough over the weekend of May 19, 20 and 21.
Alongside well-known and familiar festival attractions, the festival will showcase the city’s vibrant and diverse mix of food, drink, culture, arts, sports, activities, music and performance across a packed and eclectic schedule with these and other notable world class performance acts.
Motionhouse, the acclaimed dance-circus group, will be performing their hit outdoor production of ‘Wild’ four times throughout the weekend on a purpose built stage and scaffolding on Coney Meadow. The show explores our relationship with the natural environment and performers use dynamic choreography, acrobatic movement and hand-to-hand partnering to move through a ‘forest’ of scaffold poles to dazzling effect.
Autin Dance Theatre will be bringing their interactive family show ‘Out of the Deep Blue’ to the festival, which features a 13-foot Sea Giant puppet, inspired by the themes of the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis. You’ll be able to catch this show at the festival on Saturday May 20.
On Friday May 19, an exciting collaborative ‘Singing Schools’ event will launch the festival, where a number of schools from across Peterborough will join together in the big top to learn songs, building up to an afternoon performance for family and friends. A public launch will follow, with music and a ticketed singalong interactive cinema experience in the evening – more details to follow soon.
Music will feature across the weekend with a number of local bands and community groups performing. Groups involved include the Bengali Sanskriti Club, the Polish Music Centre, the East Timorese Association, the Ukrainian Community and Peterborough Pride. Exciting Bradford-based drumming group Punjabi Roots are also involved across the weekend and will be leading a mass participation moment on Sunday May 21 at midday.
The festival site will become a riot of feel good colour with the ‘Field of Colour’ installation. Schools, groups and many individuals are already on board busily creating colourful flowers out of recycled plastic bottles. These will be displayed on the meadow for the Festival weekend, creating a stunning colourful festival carpet.
There is still time for everyone to get involved, and there’s also the chance to participate in Peterborough Presents’ ‘Spread your Wings’ competition to create colourful birds of paradise to be displayed at the Festival. A number of local communities have already signed up to create ‘Colour Cubes’ to decorate the festival site and showcase what makes their community happy.
Creative Producer of Peterborough Celebrates Festival, Simon Hollingworth, said:
“I’m very excited to be working on Peterborough Celebrates Festival again. It was such a brilliant event last time with such an amazing atmosphere and so many people enjoying themselves.
"We have tried hard to retain all the best aspects of the first festival, while at the same time adding some new and exciting ideas too and we think people are going to really enjoy it. Many people commented last time that it was like the whole city had come down to Ferry Meadows and we really hope that it will feel like that again…. and of course the weather is going to be perfect!"
The festival is being staged by Nene Park Trust, with the support of key organisations across Peterborough, sponsors, supporters and volunteers to bring it to life. Nene Park Trust is still keen to hear from businesses who are able to sponsor the event in some way and is also calling for more volunteers to help with the smooth running of the festival.
To find out all the information about festival as it is announced or to offer your support and volunteer, please visit www.peterboroughcelebratesfestival.co.uk