Salisbury International Arts Festival

The Salisbury International Arts Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Salisbury, England over three weeks at the end of May and in early June. The International Festival invites top class performers of opera, theatre, music and dance from around the world to perform.

The first festival took place in 1973. Between 1993 and 2000 Festival Director Helen Marriage transformed the Salisbury Festival from a small local affair into what "The Times" called "an astonishing success", developing the programme and increasing the turnover by almost 700%.cite web|url=http://www.artichoke.uk.com/helen.htm|title= Helen Marriage|publisher=Artichoke|accessdate=2008-09-08] In 2008 the Festival celebrates its 35th anniversary.

Every four years the Director of the Fesitval has the potential to change. In 2005 Jo Metcalf became Festival Director.

Artistic Vision

RESONATE: 2005 - 2008

Exploring humankind’s unity through our diversity & universal human responses to art. The Resonate series of festival themes provides keynotes for artists and audiences to focus and contextualise thoughts and experiences in environmental, artistic and cultural terms:
*2005 - Respect - land - image - China, Tibet, Asia
*2006 - Relate - atmosphere - storytelling - Indigenous (Aboriginal, Inuit, Native American)
*2007 - React - water - movement - South American / Latin
*2008 - Rejoice - vegetation - song - Africa

The artistic vision is founded on the premise that art is a universal language and humanity's responses to it, can help to create a more unified, more tolerant and understanding global community. The multi-artform focus is designed to give visibility of the contemporary culture and current artistic practice of an extraordinarily diverse culture.

2005 Festival

This was Jo Metcalf's first Festival. Memorable events from this year include the making of a Sand Mandala in the Cathedral Close and a performance by Tibetan Monks at Stonehenge. There was also a strong Literature programme this year.

2006 Festival

The 2006 Festival programme reflected the theme of Relate: how people connect with one another locally and as a global community. There was a strong artistic emphasis on storytelling so another strong Literature programme. There were also recurring motifs relating to the environmental focus, atomosphere, which conjures up images of wings, clouds, birds, fairytales, myths, dreams... the intangible and the unbelievable. These themes were exemplified in the Aboriginal Cultural Showcase, which featured a wide-range of indigenous Australian artists, many of whom are visiting the UK for the first time.

2007 Festival

This Festival focused on Latin America, Movement and Water. There were many acts from many different countries in Central and South America including Mexico, Guatemala, Paraguay, Chile and Venezuela. Also, in this year, the Festival formed a partnership with the Living River Project to bring watery events to Salisbury.

2008 Festival

This is yet to take place. The dates for the 2008 Festival have been released as May 23 - June 8 2008.

References

External links

* [http://www.salisburyfestival.co.uk/ Official web site]
* [http://www.livingriver.org.uk] [The Living River Project]