Wednesday 24 July 2013

Harbour Festival: Bristol's maritime heritage

26th - 28th July 2013

Bristol's biggest free festival is approaching. The 42nd edition of Bristol Harbour Festival will take place this following weekend around the waterfront. The  city celebrates its maritime heritage with a festival since 1971 with over 250,000 visitors coming to enjoy live music, street performance and other kind of live entertainments happening in Bristol. The waterfront becomes the focal point of the festival, where tall ships from many countries and hundreds of sailing boats and old-time boats will be displayed. The festival stretches two miles along the city’s waterfront from Brunel’s s.s. Great Britain to MShed, and from Queens Square to Castle Park.

FIREWORKS! // Clevedon-based Firemagic presents Harbour Festival’s main event: the firework display! The popular fireworks will be displayed in the sky around Bristol historic harbour on Saturday night at 10pm.

Picture taken from www.cliftonhotels.com

DANCE VILLAGE // The Dance Village will be located in Millenium Square and renowned performers across the country will come to perform acts from the worlds of ballet, African dances, salsa, Bollywood and street dance, for instance. The National Youth Dance Company will be there which is, according to the organisers, “the brightest dance talent across England”. In addition to that, Sole Rebel Tap will represent their show called “Solely Rhythm”.
If you head down to the Amphitheatre area, you will find the State of Happiness, creating a “happier planet that needn’t cost the Earth”, with interactive performance, music, theatre and creative activities for everybody.

S.S. GREAT BRITAIN // S.S. Great Britain, in partnership with BBC Radio, will line up music on stage and some dressing up during the weekend, between 10am and 6pm both days. There will be food stalls, family fun, the waterfront Dockyard Cafe Bar and twelve foot-tapping live bands. Confirmed actuations: Katey Brooks, Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo, Daisy Chapman and many more.
Picture from Wikipedia

MUSIC IN QUEENS SQUARE // Queens Square will play host to reggae king DJ Derek, who has been opening the Festival for years, and his concert will happen on Friday at 9pm. Enjoy the green space perfect for picnics while listening to the best local music acts. Pigbag, Evie Woods, Lazibyrd, The Big Figure, Jama, Bashema, Lu Willott and Muff Said will perform on Saturday starting 12 noon and Burning Bandits, Freestyle Collective, The Wires, The Big Figure, Lizzie Deane, Meet your Feet, Victoria Klewin and The True Tones starting at the same time on Sunday. The Newfoundland Dogs will be performing both Saturday and Sunday.
If you are looking for something more relaxed, the Cascade Steps stage offers a mellow location on the water, with acoustic musicians and slam poetry. 

FAMILY AREA // Castle Park will become a brand new Treasure Island activity area this weekend, full of children activities and a circus stage. A giant Pirate Ship will take over Castle Park starting 12pm on Saturday and 11.50am on Sunday. There will be several characters doing some tricks, workshops and arts and crafts activities, as well as poetry and playful folk story telling accompanied with swing jazz rhythms. Cirque Bijou's circus stage in leafy Castle Park beckons, could be the perfect spot to sit back, relax and enjoy acrobatics, daring aerial, comedy, trickery and buffoonery.
Picture from www.247magazine.co.uk

MORE INFORMATION // Information included in this post is taken from official websites and Facebook posts. For more information, organisers are selling official programmes for  £2, income which subsidizes the festival. Programmes can be purchased in several stores (see list here) and you will also be able to pick it up on site from Friday at 6pm if you don’t want to make a special journey downtown to have it beforehand. The organisation apologised on Facebook after several people complaining about the impossibility of downloading the programme online, claiming that they don’t have a “download mechanism for the programme which is sophisticated enough to protect the content” so the printed version is the only programme available this year.




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