River Festival 2023

On 17th and 18th June 2023, Coventry’s first River Festival came to Millennium Place. This Festival had a free programme of live music, theatre, DJs, crafts, dance workshops, poetry, installations, film, face painting and more! River Festival Coventry showed off the best that our city has to offer, bursting with creativity from local artists.

The first ever River Festival was delivered by a collective of organisations at the heart of the city, coming together to celebrate our creative, digital, cultural, environmental and engineering sectors.

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Programme – River Festival 2023

• Talking Birds – The Whale – A Coventry based company of artists put on short theatre shows inside a metal whale.
• Ludic Rooms – Half Truths & Sticklebacks – A pagoda full of the reimagining of Coventry’s watery past with archive materials and lost histories.
• Local dance groups Ascension Youth and Elite Dance put on dance performances on both days.
• Local audio-visual artist Indira created an interactive piece which combined community voices and composed sound which played upon touching custom water-based scenes.
• Several films were shown on loop inside the Coventry Transport Museum.
• A Main Stage, hosted by Sibby du Beck, had a constant interaction with the public featuring River Hour put on by The Sherbourne Valley Project, poets Adjei Sun and Emily Hunt, and a variety of musical artists, Nicky Ager, Humans On Wax, The Upsiders, DJ Raymondo and Sisters In Dub.
• Live Mural Creation on each day, by Katie O and Michael Batchelor.
• A nonverbal theatre performance for young people with learning disabilities put on by Open Theatre.
• The Enormous Turnip – A magical puppet show for children aged 3+.
• A quiet space in Lady Herberts Garden featuring river stories from all over the world, beanbags, garden games, free face painting and an outdoor theatre performance.
• Crafts, a nature showcase and guided walks from The Sherbourne Valley Project and Warwickshire Wildlife Trust stalls.
• You can see the full programme of events and further details here.