Birmingham Festival 23

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Fri 28 Jul 2023 - Sun 06 Aug 2023

Birmingham’s Centenary Square will burst into life with colour, dance, music, spoken word, movement, wellbeing and children’s activities for Birmingham Festival 23 this summer. Celebrating the city one year on from last year’s Commonwealth Games and Birmingham 2022 Festival, the ten-day fiesta between July 28 and August 6 features nearly 100 free events for all ages and backgrounds.



With spectacular opening and closing events and a host of top Birmingham artists such as Soweto Kinch, Apache Indian, Casey Bailey, Sonia Sabri, Mohammed Ali and Amerah Saleh, organisers are promising the Festival in Centenary Square is the place to be this summer. “The aim of the Festival is to bring Brummies together to spend time in the amazing city, consuming high quality culture and community performances on our beautiful stage for free,” says Caroline Davis, of Outdoor Places Unusual Spaces (OPUS), one of the Festival’s producers. “My message to everyone would be that we would love to see you. Bring your nan, bring your bab, bring your best friend and come and hang out in Centenary Square with us.”

The Festival features four main strands of entertainment each day – family-friendly morning activities hosted by Commonwealth Games mascot Perry, a Made In Brum section focusing on the best of the city’s performance, the Power Hour with fitness workouts and classes, and finally the Twilight Takeover in which artists have come together to create new work.

Each day begins at 11am and on the weekdays there will be a specially devised Sound Bath, a sensory experience with harmonies created by a range of percussion instruments. “We start off with the relaxed welcome and stretch for which we’ve partnered with the charity Sense,” explains Caroline. “We are always rushing about so our invitation for that first hour is to actually just sit and be in the city with us.”

There are also plenty of activities for families. “We’re then switching up a gear with activities led by Perry. A lot of small children have a real affinity to the mascot and it’s brilliant that the Commonwealth Games Federation have let Perry come back this year. Perry’s Party Picnic is going to be brilliant. He’s doing all kinds of things such as bubble shows, capoeira and parachute games. This will be a great free activity for families to experience in the city centre.”

This is followed by daily Made In Brum live acts. “Families can stay and enjoy the afternoon with a variety of music and dance performances each day,” says Caroline. “There is so much choice here from local artists creating and presenting some really great work. At 6pm we come to Power Hour which has been specifically planned for the post-work crowd. This is what we call active programming so you’re not just passively watching a group, you’re getting involved in activities from boxing to urban line dancing.



And finally the stage hosts evening entertainment. “And then we have Twilight Takeover which was all done in consultation with the cultural sector where we asked how they would like to evolve their practice. Artists were saying they would like to have the opportunity to collaborate so that work wasn’t just one art form and potentially do something that was more of a story about the city. I think with Twilight Takeover we’re going to be really inspired about the city and the stories of the people here.”

The Festival also builds on some of last year’s events including another collaboration by FIERCE and Paul Ramírez Jonas, whose Key to the City was a 2022 highlight. The new project Public Trust is an interactive artwork asking people to declare a pledge to be published on a huge board alongside promises by public figures including politicians, scientists and weather forecasters, all taken from that day’s news headlines. “Key to the City really captured the imaginations of so many Brummies and Fierce is such an important cultural organisation in the city,” says Caroline. “It is great to be able to bring Paul Ramírez Jonas back this year with a UK premiere.”

So too the closing ceremony, B:Music’s Next Track, develops their Beyond the Bricks of Brum project from last year – and takes it forwards, Caroline explains. “Next Track is about stories of Birmingham and passing the baton to the next generation of artists. We’re looking at the theme of acceptance, what this brilliant city can produce from inside and to look forward to what potential future cultural events might look like.”



Commissioned and supported by Birmingham City Council, it has been essential that the Festival is free, diverse and inclusive. “I think culture should be for everybody,” says Caroline. “I want to see the whole city standing in front of that stage, or a microcosm of it. All of the main stage programme and Public Trust are BSL interpreted and we will also have full Festival coverage with an audio describer.”

And she hopes everyone will come along and enjoy the events. “I hope people feel a continued sense of pride in the city from this Festival. I think that last year everyone was a bit nervous of whether we could do it and we smashed it. It made people walk a little bit taller and chipped away a bit of that self-deprecating nature that we have. So the real test is can we do it without the buzz of the Games? I want there to be a sense of excitement, pride and joy because we’re also aware that in the last 12 months there’s been a lot more challenges for people. I think people need some free respite and escape - and the artists of this city can provide that for us.”

For the full festival programme see here.

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