There’s fun for all the family at this year’s Basingstoke Festival. The annual arts festival, in its ninth year, will showcase the best of the arts locally, nationally and internationally - from music to dance, visual art to theatre, you will ‘discover art in unusual places in unusual times’. On Friday the 25 June at 5pm, Bollywood Brass Band and Kala The Arts kickstart the weekend with a procession through Basingstoke town. The procession starts at Cross Street and finishing at the Amphitheatre next to Festival Place where the evening of music and dance continues with Sounds of the Earth, Pablo Sonnaillon and Sushmita Pati. Across the first weekend, you will find acts such as Urban Astronaut from Highly Sprung Theatre Company that combines storytelling with stunning design and an aerial performance, using a unique travelling flying machine that suspends the performer 20 feet in the air. In addition, The JukeBoxes will also be bringing to life some of our favourite celebrity pop stars including The Beatles and Miley Cyrus using props, masks, puppets and a terrible selection of wigs. You can also catch Proteus Youth Theatre in their production of Grimm Tales; bringing together over 45 young people from across the borough, aged between 8-18, Proteus Youth Theatre bring their trademark wit and vibrant flair for storytelling to this original production of famous fairy tales from across history. The festival continues into the following weekend (Saturday 3 and 4 July) where artists such as Autin Dance Theatre present Out of the Blue, an outdoor physical theatre performance featuring a largescale Sea Giant Puppet operated by five puppeteers and a female contemporary dancer, inspired by the themes of the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis. Mimbre Acrobats will return to the festival with their quirky show Lifted, a breathtaking and highly-skilled acrobatic piece of performance art, and children and their families will also be invited to look through the windows and doors of My House, a circus theatre experience from Apocalyptic Circus. Emergency Exit Arts (EEA) will be presenting the Recovery Poems during the closing weekend. Through talking and listening to communities, artists Robert Montgomery and Deanne Rodger have created an inspiring light poem that will visit Basingstoke at the end of the festival. These are only a few examples of the performances you can see during Basingstoke Festival. Local artists and organisations including Proteus, Scratchbuilt Productions, Pumpkin Pantos and Junk Jodie Arts and Crafts will also be featured in the programme highlighting the best of arts and culture Basingstoke has to offer. You may also want to check out the artwork produced by Queen Mary’s College students which is on display in Festival Place or get tickets for the Petite School of Dancing performing at The Haymarket Theatre. You can find the full programme on the website. The packed programme also features a series of outdoor cinema screenings showing popular movies in a brand-new picturesque location. The programme will include films such as Frozen 2, Back to the Future and The Greatest Showman plus many more! To ensure Basingstoke Festival is COVID-secure and to keep audiences and performers safe, events may be ticketed; these will be available via the website. For all the information for how we’re keeping you safe during Basingstoke Festival, please go to the Basingstoke Festival website.