Five Festivals to Enjoy at Home
Written by Catriona Mahmoud
Covid-19 has hit the events industry drastically this year, unfortunately during the busiest times for arts and culture festivals. These festivals are now forced to resort to an online programme in order to ensure months of work is not rendered useless. However, while the physical atmosphere is arguably the most important part of a festival, the move to online events has meant that programmes are now geographically and economically the most accessible they have ever been. Here we review and recommend five festivals you can take part in from across the globe.
Liverpool Arab Arts Festival
The UK’s longest running festival celebrating Arab arts and culture, LAAF will be presenting their programme online for the first time in their 18 year history.
The programme includes a varied collection of events that celebrate everything from music, film and performance, to poetry, literature and panel discussions. We recommend checking out Jaddoland, a documentary about an Iraqi family of artists living in Texas, and their struggling concept of belonging and identity.
LAAF this year is free to attend and you can find their announced programme and registration links here.
London Indian Film Festival (LIFF)
LIFF is one of the most exciting film festivals across London every year, and it’s always been a struggle to get to each of their venues in time to watch the full programme. Now you can view everything from the comfort of you home, and most importantly their entire programme is free to watch!
They have an excellent mix of classics, documentaries, features and short films to choose from, and we recommend catching Song of Lahore while it’s still available. It’s a stunning documentary about the Pakistani jazz band Sachal Jazz Ensemble and their journey to New York to play in the Lincoln Centre.
LIFF films will be available online for the next two months, with more to be added on a rolling basis. See the full programme and start watching here.
Bradford Literature Festival
Bookworms will be happy to know they no longer need to travel to the distant lands of The North for one of the most exciting literary events of the year. The Bradford Literature Festival returns digitally this year with an exciting programme of discussions, conversations and panels with leading authors and public figures all sharing their love of the written word.
We’re particularly excited for their event on Sat 27th June, Ilhan Omar in Conversation with Lowkey. Omar is the first Somali-American Member of Congress, the first woman of colour to represent Minnesota, and one of the first two Muslim-American women elected to Congress. Omar will discuss her own incredible story and how the challenges, trauma and fear she has faced have shaped her political life, alongside her autobiography This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman.
Details are still being confirmed, but you can follow BLF for up-to-date info via their Facebook or Twitter.
Arts Canteen Weekender
Arts Canteen are a UK based organisation that help to bring together Arab diaspora and beyond through events and experiences driven by Arab talent.
They’re launching their summer-long celebration of arts and culture next weekend with a trio of diverse events, including a live comedy show, an Arab women fundraising workshop, and the first in a 4-part series of discussions with contemporary queer Arab artists.
Tickets vary from free to £3, and they look like a great start to a full season of an engaging online programme to keep you entertained.
Find out more.
Tomorrowland
The live music industry will likely be one of the hardest to recover from global lockdowns. And the struggle to retrieve crowds will undoubtedly be a difficult task. But for now we can enjoy a myriad of famous faces and sounds from the comfort of our home.
Tomorrowland is notoriously one of the most physically atmospheric festivals in the world, an unforgettable experience that will be hard to recreate in your living room, but what a novelty it will be to try. Including a line-up of big names expected of one of the biggest EDM festivals in the world from Afrojack to Steve Aoki, Tomorrowland states that through this online event:
“Never before did the People of Tomorrow unite this way. Never before did people form all around the world feel this close.”
Tickets and programme can be found here.