Bloomsbury Festival Reveals 2024 Programme

Bloomsbury Festival will return this October with over 100 shows, exhibitions, events, concerts, family activities and walks and talks under the theme ‘Human.Kind’ which will explore AI, global strife, human existence and kindness. The 10 day festival, which began in 2006, takes place across the area’s streets, parks, museums, galleries, laboratories and public and private buildings in an annual celebration of local artists, culture and community. Events are free and ticketed with prices between £3 and £25.

The festival will kick off on Friday 18th October with Bloomsbury Festival’s Big Night Out at Conway Hall, a free showcase of talent from across the festival programme with music, dance, pop-up performances and food and drinks. Following this on Saturday 19th, Bloomsbury Festival’s opening day outdoor event, Cromer Street & Bramber Green Family Day includes performance, activities, and street food.

Highlights from the festival’s programme of performance, exhibitions and literature include:

• Saturday Discovery Day (26 October) at Holborn Library. A family science and creative day with pop-up exhibitions, games and activities including origami, storytelling, urban design, as well as new discoveries about the brain with some of London’s leading science teams including scientists from UCL, Moorfields and Francis Crick Institute.
• Bloomsbury Festival has partnered with Camden New Journal for Open To All, Coerced By None: The Camden New Journal Story (19 – 24 October) celebrating the history and heritage of the local independent community newspaper.
• A festival within the festival, Jamboree King’s Cross will present a week of events (19 – 27 October) with a jam-packed programme of music, dance, life drawing and poetry

The New Wave Programme, includes a programme of selected emerging talent in art, music and theatre. 

A series of theatre productions selected during the festival’s annual competition for emerging writers and theatre-makers will showcase six new works: 

• Attempts On A Birch Tree  (25 – 26 October) by I AM I AM  is a live theatrical experiment about the climate crisis and falling for things you shouldn’t in which the performers entice the audience to fall in love with a tree over the course of 50 minutes.
• 3 Couples, 2 Breakups, 1 Barbie And The Berlin Wall – Square Pegs (19 October) by Macready Theatre Young Actors’ Company. Eight teenagers (and a Barbie doll) invite you to a joyfully absurd, fast-paced, fun-filled play about love in all its weird and wonderful forms.
• The Encrypted Forest (19 – 20 October) by Jim Osman is an evening of folktales for the digital age, inspired by post-internet art, weird fiction, cosmic horror, and traditional folktales.
• In the Daisy chain (25 – 26 October) by Princess Bestman, ted-talk meets gig-theatre in a performance looking into the realities of England’s Foster care system, fusing audience participation and music with playful commentary.
• SOGYA 25 – 26 October) by The Avieli Arthouse is a visceral Afro-Centric theatrical experience honouring World War II Commonwealth soldiers who sacrificed their lives inviting audiences to reclaim lost legacies.
• Radio play Haddock (24 October) by Max Raeburn mimics a folktale, and follows an Irish couple in the 1950s questioning their faith in their religion, each other and themselves.

Other highlights from the theatre programme include Human/Animal (19 October) an intense performance film revealing actors in trance-like transformation between human and animal states, Unsewn (25 October) follows two women, an Italian and an Indian seamstress, linked together by a dress through which they communicate in a magical-realism performance exploring the oppressions faced by women in different parts of the world. As part of a one day showcase of experimental theatre The Jellyfish Enigma (27 October) sees five strangers trapped in a room with no memory of who they are or why they’re there. Finally, last year’s New Wave Programme winnerGoodgirl (20 October) by Parbati Chaudhury will return to Bloomsbury Festival for a newly developed performance of the show which explores the impact of cultural expectations, conditioning, and prejudice on the lives of South Asian women and girls. 

The festival will conclude with Encore (27 October) a celebration held at the iconic Bloomsbury Club. With a historic interior and a bar with a contemporary range of cocktails, soft drinks and bites, Bloomsbury Festival invites audience, performers and partners to wind down with music and spoken to celebrate the 2024 festival. The full programme including theatre, music, literature, art and science events can be seen here.

Festival Director Rosemary Richards said “This year we have a wonderful and wide-ranging programme of events themed on Human.Kind. We are delighted to welcome all new and regular partners and venues including UCL,The Bedford Estates, CDA BID, University of London, City Lit, Camden Libraries, and SHM Foundation. We are delighted to announce the 2024 Springboard creative training programme for young adults supported by Camden Council Culture Service with funding from the Cultural Education and Learning Support Fund, Arts Council England and partnered for the first time, by Westminster Kingsway College. The festival is built on the enthusiasm of hundreds of existing partners, who contribute events, venue space and sponsorship, and we continue to forge new collaborations, including for the 2024 festival, events offered by St Giles-in-the-Fields, Jamboree King’s Cross, Charles Dickens Museum, Coram, the Foundling Museum, University of London and UCL. We would like to add a warm welcome to a new Patron, Dr Michael Spence.”

Festival Patron UCL President & Provost Dr Michael Spence AC said “The Bloomsbury Festival is a fantastic celebration of the worlds of theatre, music, literature, art and science. The festival is also a catalyst for bringing talented individuals and organisations in our community together to engage audiences from London and beyond. UCL has been a proud partner of the festival for many years and so I am delighted to have been invited to be its patron. As we approach our bicentenary in 2026, this year’s theme Human.Kind is particularly relevant as, in a divided world, the need to highlight what brings us together is more pressing than ever.”

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