About ArtsFest
ArtsFest is Birmingham’s biggest & most vibrant cultural festival! ArtsFest celebrates the astounding wealth of creative talent existing in the West Midlands and promotes the region as the bustling cultural centre it is – full of high quality, innovative, cutting edge arts and entertainment activities. ArtsFest is a festival for the young and old alike and we really do stick by our motto that there is something here for everybody!
ArtsFest takes place annually and most importantly, it’s completely FREE. Now you can’t get much better than that can you!
Inspired by the UitMarkt festival in Amsterdam, ArtsFest was designed in 1998 to ‘excite and intrigue audiences’ by the sheer magnitude of what was on offer by local artists and to build new audiences for these artists of the region.
Until 2004 ArtsFest was co-produced by Birmingham City Council and Audiences Central, an audience development and research agency dedicated to increasing the numbers and expanding the range of people participating in the arts in the West Midlands. The concept of ArtsFest was jointly developed by both organisations. Since 2005 ArtsFest has been solely produced by Birmingham City Council where it has continued to grow in size each year. Without doubt, ArtsFest is one of the most exciting arts events of the summer!
Since its beginning ArtsFest has been truly unique within the UK. Everything is free, nothing can be pre-booked by audiences and almost everything lasts only 30 minutes. This means that you can see ballet to Bhangra, dub poetry to indie rock, without having to spend any money, queue for hours or leave your own city! What’s more, being City based this urban festival comes without mud! So whether you are a regular attendee of the arts looking for a little inspiration, or simply want to give the arts a try – ArtsFest is the festival for you so come and give it a go and love it as we do!
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1.
Kamela Dehar | April 30, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I am interested in voluntary work for Artsfest. How do I join?
2.
English | September 15, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Enjoyed the Birmingham sunshine – well cloud yesterday but pretty warm and what a great day it turned out to be. Managed to see most bands that played the unsigned & main stages; although just a couple of hundred yards this required the application of the long forgotten skill of sprinting! Crowds of 25K are being reported.
The Levellers headlining the main stage were excellent as ever, and Midas headlining the unsigned stage drew the biggest crowd there and generated some spontaneous crazy dancing front of stage.
The Fillmore Gears played the unsigned stage too and were excellent, they followed this up with filling in for the Mexicolas on the main stage and played a few Led Zep classics and made a decent fist of it – so well done again to these guys; recommend you catch these guys when you can. Midas followed them and pretty much picked up where they left off from the unsigned stage …..they soon had the crowd jumping and a few pits forming; despite some equipment malfunctions – the loss of Amp and rhythm guitar! – Apparently the amp died! And the spare although in the van was unavailable because the van had to be moved from back of stage loading area and parked half a mile down the road.
)
The rated Metro’s followed Midas but having read loads about these guys they didn’t really do it for me; Envy and other Sins up next were polished and I enjoyed them too; very radio friendly stuff and their recent TV success and constant gigging has seen these guys improve lots from when I first saw them a couple of years ago.
Next year definitely!