Sun 16 Aug 12:00 | Festival Website, YouTube, Social Media
Saree Tying
Puja Pandya demonstrates how to tie a saree
Inspirate’s flagship festival, An Indian Summer, is back this year from 2nd - 6th July, bringing a bold and unique programme of contemporary South Asian arts and culture to Leicester! We have so many wonderful venues that we’re bringing the festival to this year, and we’re excited to share it all with you.
This year’s theme is ‘The Stories We Bring, The Stories We Shape’. Across five days, the festival will be an exploratory and fluid space where artists, participants and audiences gather to share, experience and create stories that matter to them.
The festival kickstarts with an evening programme of events in partnership with Real Ale Classroom and The Big Difference, offering comedy, live music, an electric evening of drag and cabaret, and a pub quiz with a theatrical twist, more to be announced soon!
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We’re excited to collaborate with Attenborough Arts Centre to bring the festival to the beautiful grounds of Botanic Gardens, with circus, music, walkabout theatre and dance animating the grounds, brought to the festival through our partnership with Without Walls.
On Sunday 6th July, the festival travels to Curve, Jubilee Square and Phoenix Cinema for a vibrant and busy day of events, offering something for everyone, including film screenings, visual arts workshops, movement sessions, storytelling and the second day of our exciting outdoor arts performances.
We close the festival week with a thought provoking and powerful performance by Vidya Patel on Curve’s mainstage, developed through her residency and collaboration with Philharmonia Orchestra.
Supported by Arts Council England, Without Walls, Curve Theatre and Attenborough Arts Centre.
The Stories We Bring, The Stories We Shape
This year, An Indian Summer invites us to explore the transformative power of storytelling.
"The Stories We Bring, The Stories We Shape" delves into the narratives we inherit and the new ones we create, reflecting upon our collective and personal past, present and future.
We’ll honour the stories that sit deeply within us. Stories that have journeyed across borders and carried through time, passed on and cherished as a collection of memories and traditions, preserving the wisdom of our ancestors.
We’ll reflect upon the stories we are living within now; how they form our sense of self, our way of being, and provide the lens through which we perceive the world around us.
We’ll look towards the future and the stories we want to shape and tell; evolving identities, new perspectives, opening up possibilities, reclaiming our histories, reframing, challenging, igniting change.
This festival will be a living, breathing and fluid space where these stories are told, explored and absorbed. Through theatre, movement, dance, poetry, film, music and conversation, we invite our audiences and artists alike to come together, to share, imagine and create the stories that feel most vital to us.
