Ryan's Gig Guide - August 2019

Lady Sanity 18-20th July saw the Festival of Audacity taking place in Birmingham to provide a stage for brave and audacious activist art. Photos by Paul Stringer  www.paulstringer.co.uk Driven by the belief that art should be brought to the people, the festival programme didn’t take place exclusively in venues but in everyday spaces like National Express buses, New Street Station, and Rotunda Square. Members of the public got the chance to experience a free multidisciplinary arts festival programme, containing theatre, spoken word, installation art, dance,VR, film, music, interactive workshops and more. The festival was brought produced by Free Radical, an art activism platform which is part of the Beatfreeks Collective, who say, "At a time of political uncertainty, activist art is needed to unite our communities by turning suffering and injustice into hope and power. In addition to platforming engaging artists for the main programme, the Festival celebrates Hip-Hop and activism with an incredible Afterparty headlined by Lowkey, who is arguably the biggest name on the UK hip-hop underground scene. Since Free Radical enables young people to tell stories about themselves and the world, this year’s Festival was inspired by Beatfreeks' BrumYouth Trends - a pioneering flagship report for the city, which revealed that 58.2% of Birmingham’s young people aged 14-25 state that transport is unsatisfactory... 14% don’t use public transport and 32% claim that parking is difficult. To increase accessibility within Birmingham and in the arts, Festival of Audacity consciously responded to young Brum voices by hosting the programme mainly on modes of transport. Audiences could stumble across performance poetry and dance in New Street Station; experience award-winningVR on a private bus; partake in a Hip-Hop workshop on a truck in Bullring & Grand Central; listen in on a live audio performance on the number 50 bus route, to name a few. With wellbeing in mind, an unconventional walking tour was led by BirminghamArtivists in Training.The group is made up of young, local artist-activists who showed participants their favourite pieces from within the festival programme and also performed along the way."  www.beatfreeks.com/foa Check them out in our Spotify playlist www.ryansgigguide.com/audio  www.ryansgigguide.com 16 rgg Aug 2019