Festivals news

Celebrating dance at Bridport

THE first Bridport Dance Festival takes place over the weekend 23rd and 24th May at venues around the town, including the arts centre and the Electric Palace. The programme ranges across the dance spectrum, from tango to tap. With workshops, performance and free events there is something for all ages and dance interests, activities for…

Read more...

Thought-provoking writers at Bath

CELEBRITY names may tend to grab the headlines at book festivals, but the real meat of the event will always be the literary writers, the Booker prize-winners and those whose books make us think, tell us things we didn’t know we needed to know, prod us into thinking more deeply or excite our imagination in…

Read more...

Look up, take flight with Salisbury Festival

GARETH Machin, artistic director of Wiltshire Creative – Salisbury Playhouse, Salisbury Arts Centre and Salisbury International Arts Festival – urged audiences to let their imaginations take flight when he launched the 2025 festival programme, running from Saturday 24th May to Sunday 8th June. He said: “A festival is an opportunity to let imaginations soar and this…

Read more...

Silver jubilee for Wylye Valley Art Trail

THE millennium was not only the dawn of a new century, locally it marked the launch of a new celebration of visual art. Wylye Valley Art Trail, the brainchild of Crockerton-based artist Nick Andrew, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, from Saturday 3rd to Sunday 11th May. In the quarter-century since the launch, this eight-day…

Read more...

Get your dancing shoes on!

BATH’s biggest free party kicks off this year’s festival on Friday 16th May in the new-traditional colourful way with music for every taste – acoustic, pop, blues, folk, funk/soul, jazz, blues and indie/rock through to choral and classical. You really are invited to put on your dancing shoes and let your hair down as the…

Read more...

Dorset Opera Festival’s 20 years at Bryanston

DORSET Opera Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary at Bryanston School’s Coade Hall this year, following its move to Blandford from its original home at Sherborne School. This year’s festival will run from 22nd to 26th July, and will include two formal dinners in Bryanston House. The opera programme is thrilling, with Verdi’s cruel but musically…

Read more...

Farewell to Tanya

TRIBUTES have poured in for Tanya Bruce-Lockhart, former director of Beaminster Festival and founder and director of Bridport Literary Festival, who died suddenly on Saturday 5th April at the age of 81. A familiar and much-loved figure in both Bridport and Beaminster, Tanya had been at the heart of cultural life in West Dorset since…

Read more...

Celebrating the art of travel writing

TRAVELLERS have been writing about their journeys for millennia – the Greek writer and geographer Pausanias, born in 110AD in Asia Minor, a province of the Roman Empire, is generally considered to be the world’s first travel writer. His 21st century successors have trekked to the remotest locations, into rainforests, across the Antarctic, up the…

Read more...

Happy birthday, Bath Literature Festival

ASK many people which is their favourite English city … the answer will often be Bath. It’s hardly surprising – a pearl of fine Georgian stone houses, terraces, circuses, crescents and streets, set in a spectacular valley, with some of the country’s finest Roman remains and a history of art, culture and literature. A roll call…

Read more...