Acclaimed Motionhouse Dance-circus

St John the Baptist – Patronal Evensong

Group to Perform at Dizzying Heights for Peterborough Celebrates Festival

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, familyfriendly festival at Ferry Meadows that will bring together and celebrate everything great about Peterborough over the weekend of 19th, 20th and 21st May 2023.

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 20th May.

On Friday 19th May, 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 21st May at midday.

The festival site will become a riot of feel good colour with our ‘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, visit peterboroughcelebratesfestival.co.uk

Local People Behind the Camera

To coincide with Tony’s 25th anniversary, we have news of another exciting development, as the Village Tribune ventures into film!

Regular readers may remember meeting Mick Child – director of Forge Photography and Film Production Ltd – in a previous issue, when he spoke about his love of photography and filmmaking. He is the person responsible for this forthcoming project.

Mick has been a local resident onand-off since 1973, attending both Northborough Primary School and AMVC before starting a career with the railways. 30 years later, in 2017 – having worked on the East Coast Main Line electrification scheme as a railman and risen through the ranks to become a Railway Overhead Line Engineer working in maintenance and on major projects all over the country – he took early retirement and was able to turn his lifelong passion into a career.

Mick says, “I have written and produced documentaries which have screened at film festivals worldwide – although a festival win or broadcast deal still elude me –and I have ongoing documentary work that is being entered into film festivals throughout 2023-24.” Maybe this will be Mick’s year! We are very grateful to him for initiating the idea for this series and giving up what little spare time he has out of his busy schedule to produce these films.

“This Tribune project is a bit of fun for me,” says Mick. “It’s my way of recognising the pleasure I have had from reading the magazine, whilst celebrating the contribution that Tony Henthorn and his team regularly make to our local community. Tony has personally led production of the VT for 25 years now, a massive commitment not many people would undertake voluntarily.”

The film series, consisting of 3-4 episodes each roughly five minutes’ duration, will be an introduction to some of the local photographers who share their wonderful images and articles in the magazine, taking us to their favourite places around Tribland and surrounds, whilst talking a little about themselves and their passion for photography.

The films also feature musical soundtracks specially composed and performed for us by talented young musician, Rohith Varadarajan, 13. Rohith attends The Peterborough School and aims to build a future career in music. He says, “I heard about the project through my English tutor, Anne Lees, who told me about her involvement and invited me to take part too. It was totally unexpected, but I was very happy to be asked.”

Rohith has been playing piano for eight years and says he listened to the musical accompaniments to nature documentaries to get an idea of what would sound right. “It took around two hours to compose the first piece, then 20-30 minutes for the others once I got used to the process.” He is considering moving to India eventually to become a Music Director as music is very varied there, and consequently provides greater scope with a larger audience. We are indebted to him for his contributions, we think he has done a fantastic job, and wish him all the best for the future. Thank you, Rohith!

Episode 1 features local photographer, Dave Radcliffe, who takes us on a circular walk from Deeping Gate along the south bank of the River Welland, to its confluence with Maxey Cut. Dave explains how he got started with photography, and how he pictures the images in his mind before he takes the shot. Watch the first episode here:

And look out for details of further episodes in future issues. We hope you enjoy them.

Episode one YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/HHyH-5u_J9o