One of the oldest arts festivals in England, Norfolk & Norwich Festival returns for 17 days in May.
For 17 days each May, the Norfolk & Norwich Festival transforms public spaces, city streets, performance venues, parks, forests and beaches, bringing people together to experience the same brilliant and inspirational events. The flagship arts festival for the East of England, continues the tradition of presenting world-class international performances alongside trail blazing local artists, theatre, literature, visual arts, circus, dance and emerging new talent.
The Festival will open with a pair of special performances in the stunning surroundings of Norwich Cathedral from Grammy-winner Arooj Aftab and legendary DJ Gilles Peterson, who presents a unique sit-down evening. Also on the music line-up this year is 2024 Mercury Prize nominee and jazz composer corto.alto, genre-hopping samplers and explorers Still House Plants, and joyful Ghanaian gospel troupe Alogte Oho and His Sounds of Joy.
For those seeking their classical music fix, the Festival is filled with talented acts, such as fast rising star saxophonist Emma Rawicz, innovative collective Chaos String Quartet and the BBC Singers, who perform a concert surveying a number of James Macmillan’s choral compositions. Meanwhile, residencies from guitarist Sean Shibe and Lotte Betts-Dean run the gamut from intimate lute recitals to solo electronics rearranged to vocals and far beyond.
At the centre of the Festival’s dance line-up is, as ever, the circus spectacular in the Adnams Spiegeltent. This year’s offering is Showdown, by Upswing, a mix of circus thrills and cheeky humour as six contestants battle to the top in a fast-paced game show style competition. It is joined by two memorable dance performances from the company of Aakash Odedra, presented in partnership with Norwich Theatre, which explore Indian classical tradition, Islamic poetry and the experience of dyslexia in unique style.
Presented in partnership with the National Centre for Writing, the City of Literature Weekend explores questions of communication and representation with numerous events including the Harriet Martineau Lecture, delivered this year by celebrated best-selling crime novelist Val McDermid.
Elsewhere, the Festival’s Connect & Create programme flourishes with events created in participation with local communities, such as The Norwich Nine, an intergenerational collaboration between Bootworks Theatre Co. and a group of nine-year-old children, MONSTERS, a short film depicting a post-apocalyptic fairy tale; created by and starring children from East Anglia; and Rebel Resistors Radio Club - a new project by Action Hero, in which they work with a group of girls on analogue radios, to broadcast their manifestos for the future.
Norfolk & Norwich Festival: 9-25 May 2025
Full Festival line-up here