KENSINGTON & CHELSEA FESTIVAL

Spanning the summer - until Thursday 31 August 2023 - the Kensington and Chelsea Festival has returned for its third consecutive year.

Taking place across the borough in a reimagining of its spaces, from the best-known cultural venues to the less discovered areas and outdoor spaces, Kensington and Chelsea Festival makes use of every inch of the borough to host a multitude of live art performances, large and small, showcasing exceptional established artists alongside the very best emerging talent.

With a cultural offering across theatre, circus, opera, dance, music, outdoor arts, family shows, participatory activities, talks, walks and public art pieces, the festival was born out of a desire to lift spirits by celebrating culture and creativity.

First established in 2021 with a firm goal of ensuring the myriad events offer everyone in the borough and beyond a chance to experience the widest variety of culture on their doorsteps, the kcfestival.co.uk

Festival is run and funded by Kensington and Chelsea Council.

One of the most exciting projects to appear at the Festival will be Mars, the touring artwork by UK artist Luke Jerram. Measuring seven metres in diameter, the artwork features 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the Martian surface. At an approximate scale of 1:1 million, each centimetre of the internally lit spherical sculpture represents 10 kilometres of the surface of Mars.

The artwork allows you to view Mars from the air, as though you are a satellite mapping and studying the surface in perfect detail. Every valley, crater, volcano, and mountain are laid bare to inspect. You are transported to this desert wasteland, to imagine what it’s like to step foot on this incredible planet and in comparison, really value life on Earth.

Mars was named by the ancient Romans for their god of war because its reddish colour was reminiscent of blood. Accompanying the Mars sculpture is a specially created sound composition by BAFTA and Ivor Novello award winning composer Dan Jones. Featuring the sounds of seas, deserts and clips from NASA missions to Mars, it also incorporates the sounds of distant bombing and people marching, as if to war. This new soundtrack allows viewers the opportunity to reflect on the current conflict in Ukraine and the history and notion of war.

Each venue also programmes their own series of events to contemplate not just the beauty of the red planet and wonder of space science, but also to highlight injustice and the effects of war.

Mars follows the hugely successful appearance of Luke Jerram’s previous works at the Kensington and Chelsea Festival. Each attracted up to 3,000 visitors per day. This summer will be the first time that Mars has been installed in a Church setting and a new soundscape has been created especially for the festival.

The installation will appear at three different sites across the festival. For August, it will be at All Saints’ Church (W11 1JS) from Monday 31 July to Tuesday 8 August and Jubilee Square (W8 7NX) - an outdoor setting from Thursday 10 August to Sunday 13 August. Tickets are required, but all locations will be free to visit.

Other highlights of the festival include an extensive outdoor arts programme and a return of one of the most popular collaborations from last year’s festival in collaboration with Notting Hill Carnival.

At the heart of Kensington and Chelsea Festival’s careful curation is a desire to reflect, represent, inspire, and involve the entire community who live in the borough.

Year-on-year, the Festival aims to broaden accessibility, to bring people together, and to help to ensure that art, in all its forms, is available for all. To that end, 70% of the activities offered are either free or “pay what you want”, and concession tickets are available for all shows presented in theatres and established venues, thereby ensuring that budget is no barrier to residents enjoying the festival and perhaps trying something they may not have considered before.

Whether residents or visitors are in the mood for the raucous or the refined, the programming is intended to ensure that festival will have events in place to suit - from family shows, street art, and circus to visual art, opera, and open-air arias. In this way, the festival aims to increase accessibility and break down barriers to taking part (be they financial, cultural, language-based, or other).