Guildford Festival for the Arts.
It was such a great honour to join the Mayor of Guildford – Howard Smith and Guildford’s MP – Zoe Franklin, to officially launch the Inaugural ‘Guildford Festival of the Arts’ at Tunsgate Quarter on Thursday. (25th September). It was even more personal to me as it was created by my Daughter Charlie and her friend Lauren Gerrard along with a team of volunteers which included my Wife Suzanne.
Co-founder Charlie outlines the concept, “Guildford Festival of the Arts is a creative festival in the heart of Guildford designed to promote and celebrate creativity, within the community. The important work of the creative industry often gets overlooked and we wanted to give a space to those who work in the arts to help promote the wonderful work that they do and showcase the amazing opportunities on offer to creatives, or those that just want to try something new.”
“Guildford and the surrounding area is much more creative than people may realise. There are some amazing spaces that offer workshops and events, exhibitions and art history that not many people are aware of. Other places may have art fairs and stamp trails lots of these places don’t have the diversity that we do. The town does have other creative events and festivals of course – for example, Guildford Fringe is an amazing creative organisation and we love going to their events each year – however, we felt that there is little attention on the visual artists that live and work within the local area and that’s why we felt that the Guildford Festival of the Arts needed to become a reality.”
A key feature of the festival is the walking/stamp trail which showcases Guildford’s creative community – all based within walking distance of Guildford town centre. Whether that’s a drop-in-drop-out workshop, an exhibition or something to just observe, you can turn up and get involved in one way or another. At each of these locations there will also be able to get a stamp on a stamp map (which can be collected along with a brochure during the festival) and on the completion of the stamp trail there is an opportunity to win a prize!
With eleven venues signed up to the art trail, and 20 venues taking part in the festival, an amazing street art experience, (where a select team of local artists will be transforming the exterior of a building that has been abandoned for years), screen-printing drop-in workshops hosted by Ochre Print, a creative pottery workshop by Watts Gallery, talks and events hosted by local artists and workshops for young people there is plenty going on that will inspire and entertain and many of the venues have cafes including New House Art Space, Art + Grind, the Guildford Institute, Yvonne Arnaud, Solar Sisters, and Supporting pubs and bars include The Star Inn, Britannia Pub and Growlers.
Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre will be hosting workshops throughout the festival as well as showcasing the video work submitted to our Open Call and Sustain Film festival. John Walmsley will be showing his photographic work there and they will also be hosting their own exhibition ‘Designing for our stage’ which will include: Sketches, sets, costumes and photographs of Yvonne Arnaud original productions where the public will be able to see how designers have created concepts for their productions, and how they’ve been brought to life on stage.
The Festival is in town until Sunday 28th of September and a great place to start is with a visit to Tunsgate Quarter where you can pick up your trail map and find out what is going on for the day. Be sure to pop inside Charlie’s Memory house installation which is an amazing visual experience from the inside! You can find out more too on the website – www.guildfordfestivalofthearts.co.uk and please follow and share your photos on Instagram: @guildfordfestivalofthearts.
Photography by Andy Newbold
