Best 5 Spring Festivals on the Beach
There’s so many festivals happening on UK beaches this spring that we thought we’d better list the best of them for you. We’ve got the Brighton & Hove Food and Drink Festival, Porthcawl International Jazz Festival, Eastbourne Festival and Tagore Festival in April followed by the Brighton Festival in May.
1. Brighton & Hove Food and Drink Festival ( 30 March – 9 April 2012)
This is the largest festival of its kind in the South of England and it runs for 10 days! It’s a showcase of fantastic food, drink and hospitality in Brighton and surrounding Essex and it’s packed with taste bud related activities like the Gourmet Bus Tour, Cakes & Bakes Festival, Whiskey Lounge Fest and many, many more. This festival was already featured on our blog and you can read the full article here.
2. Eastbourne Festival 2012 (7 – 29 April 2012)
Eastbourne Festival 2012 has attracted a great mix of the traditional and contemporary, featuring popular and classical music, theatre, dance, comedy and the visual arts.
This year’s Streets of Eastbourne opening event will host not one but two stages showcasing a variety of performances including music, dance, theatre, poetry & story telling ditties, plus street dance, hoopla & poi performances & workshops. A street market will meander along the high street linking the two performance stages.
Festival events include Martin Carthy, Rag Mama Rag, Roy Bailey and Tony Benn with ‘The Writing on the Wall’, Jacqui Dankworth, Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart, Albert Lee and Hogan’s Heroes, Phil Beer and Juan Martin’s Musica Alhambra. Eastbourne Parish Church is organising a series of workshops, concerts and recitals throughout the Festival period, Catalyst Arts will be hosting workshops, and there will be a new visual art event, ‘The Visitor’, at the Redoubt.
For more information please visit http://www.eastbournefestival.co.uk/
3. Tagore Festival, Devon (6th April – 9th April)
An alternative Easter weekend for all the family taking place from Friday 6th until Monday 9th April 2012 at Dartington Hall, Devon. Tagore Festival is inspired by Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prize-winner whose passions for the arts, education and ecology shaped the Dartington we know today.
The line up includes Andy Sheppard & Kuljit Bhamra, Arun Ghosh, Zoe and Idris Rahman, Sanju Sahai, Jaymini Sahai, Soumik Datta, Sheema Mukherjee, Puppet State Theatre Company, Jay Ramsay, and Vayu Naidu. With speakers including Satish Kumar, Gerard Lemos, Rupert & Claire Callender, Dr. Stephan Harding, Philip Franses, and O.N.V. Kurup. Tickets start at £3.50 and there are multi-buy offers on the official website.
4. Porthcawl International Jazz Festival (12th – 14th April)
This popular Jazz Festival is held at a variety of venues in Porthcawl, roughly halfway between Cardiff and Swansea, near to Bridgend.
The line up includes The John Miller Orchestra, The Pasadena Roof Orchestra, Laura Collins, Gabrielle Ducombe Quartet, Julian Martin Trio, Nik Turner Quartet, B D Lenz, The Capital City Jazz Orchestra, Wonderbrass and The Cottle Brothers, The Graham Watkins Quartet with Clare Hingott, Liberty Street Jazz Band, Dominic Norcross Quartet, John Paul Gard Trio, and many more still to be announced.
Tickets vary but there is an all event ticket for £60, which can be purchased from the official website.
5. Brighton Festival (5 – 27 May)
For 3 weeks, Brighton and Hove comes alive with an exhilarating mix of music, theatre, performance, film, debate, visual arts and unique outdoor experiences – 143 events in total. Vanessa Redgrave, stage, screen and television actress, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 1995, member of Liberty, of Amnesty International, and a longstanding member/supporter of Memorial and Za Prava Cheloveka, the two chief Russian Human Rights NGOs, brings her passion to Brighton Festival as Guest Director of the 46th three-week celebration.
Over the three weeks we explore many of her interests which permeate the wide-ranging programme across music, theatre, dance, film, literature and from acting and politics to memory and nostalgia to homeland and story-telling, to humanitarian concerns and economic and social issues including those of the various charities she represents and in particular children’s needs in our world. http://brightonfestival.org/