‘GLASTONBURY FOR THE UNDER FIVES’ - bOing! celebrates its 10th Anniversary
bOing! International Family Festival returns to Canterbury to celebrate its 10 year anniversary
More than 12,000 people are expected at Canterbury’s International Family Festival bOing! as it celebrates its 10th anniversary this summer.
From world-renowned family theatre shows to multi-award-winning performers, bOing! has been putting on high-quality family entertainment on the University of Kent campus in Canterbury for a decade.
Spearheaded by the Gulbenkian Arts Centre, the popular summer event started in 2014 and has grown into the leading family arts festival in the South East and remains free to enter, with only indoor performances ticketed. Director of Culture and Creative Projects David Sefton, who took up his role in Canterbury back in 2021, believes that the festival’s accessibility is one of its greatest strengths.
“I think the greatest thing about bOing! is there are literally no barriers to participation,” he says. “It is free, you just rock up onto the campus, loads of stuff going on that you could just discover without knowing about it in advance. I think that's one of the reasons it works so well. Putting something that scale on for free is the most accessible thing you can do.”
Wandering across the campus, families will stumble across stages with live music, roaming shows, even gigantic structures to explore and experience. It is a gateway to discover the arts, and for many, it will be for the first time.
“The whole point of bOing! is that it programmes high standard work for kids and families,” says David. “So international, high-quality, world-renowned, fun, so it is a gateway, hopefully, but it is also art in and of itself. IT stands on its own as a high quality art event.
“We are introduced to people, you know, who may never have bought a ticket for anything in their lives before and certainly, for the little ones, won't have bought tickets. But you’re actually introducing them to a proper, curated, programmed artistic experience, totally geared for them.”
Audiences this summer will be treated to headliners including Chevalier: Hobbyhorse Circus by Race Horse Company, a magical one-man circus show from Finland, The Sticky Dance by Second Hand Dance, a weaving world of tape for young children and for neurodivergent audiences, and RPM by Gorilla Circus, an acrobatic display all set on a giant custom-built treadmill.
And never fear… the eternally popular Luminarium returns – the giant immersive sculptures by Architects of Air filled with colour and light. This year the Architects bring LuminiMax, a new Luminarium built around three giant domes.
As well as international artists, bOing! provides a platform for local companies, too, with Canterbury’s Half-a-String bringing their Puppet Van, MCDC from Folkestone bringing In Clouds, and Square Peg Arts presenting In.difference, a new work for families and neurodiverse audiences using cutting-edge technology.
“We spend months mapping out both physically and chronologically when everything happens, so that there's things going on throughout the day that you can just wander around and find,” says David. “I'm a very, very big fan of the roaming, walk around, shows. They're the ones that create that Pied Piper effect, where there's suddenly hundreds of children running after these artists.
“They create these genuine pop up experiences, where you suddenly realise how many people are on the site, because suddenly you'll get several hundred children in one place at one time.
There's loads of little moments like that, I mean, there's nothing like it. It’s a little bit like Glastonbury for the under fives.”
A constant in the local events calendar, bOing!, on numbers alone, has been a major success.
“It's that thing where it's in the consciousness of the local community, and people talk about it, and you don't have to explain it to people because everyone knows what it is. And if you've got kids, it's a no brainer, because you can just head up to campus and they will be entertained for hours.”
This year the bOing! Music Stage will be programmed by Music For Change and City Sound Project, both Canterbury based, while the festival has always championed work for babies and toddlers, and this year we host Univers by Engruna Teatre, a sensory experience for early ages, plus the Baby Zone drop-in tent makes a welcome return.
There will also be a paper banquet presented by Animate Arts, Minecraft Coding, Lego Robotics, film screenings and the FutureProof Zone – with ideas for how we can live in better harmony with our planet.
“We are proud of the fact that it's about the quality as well,” says David. “It’s about making sure that the quality of the work you do for kids and families is the same as the quality and you apply the same standards to the work you put on for adults.”
bOing! International Family Festival returns on August 24th and 25th 2024.
INFO: www.boingfestival.com
WHY I LOVE bOING! - Voluteer Keith Pattemore
Why do you volunteer for bOing!?
Hard to distil this down without sounding trite and contrived. I think the best way to express it is the feeling you get when you see the pure joy on the face of a young child who has just experienced a piece of performance that was so new and so different to them that they leave mesmerised, and wanting to find more.
This is quite often followed by a quiet ‘thank you’ from a parent.
Your favourite memories in the years you have been here?
A very difficult question to narrow down. I really enjoy all the diverse multicultural music we get.
Of the other pieces, The Chip Machine in 2018 is a standout memory (DJ Freitmachine by Superhallo from Netherlands). In this you had to select a potato, give it a name and then go on a fantastical journey with it, ending up with a delicious portion of chips to leave with.
Seeing two of our daughters performing as DJ's in the same year was also a highlight. They took part in the 10-Minute Dance Parties with Joseph O'Farrell from Australia.
The Curious Scrapbook of Josephine Bean by Shona Reppe was a mesmerising delight to see. This was in 2017, as was Jukeboxes by Bootworks Theatre. This was absolutely brilliant.
I particularly like the roaming performances, we get. I am matrimonially contracted to say that the highlight would have to be the Moving Memory performance ‘Love Grows’ in 2019. That was very popular .
