Kent's International Family Arts Festival is back Sat 26 & Sun 27 August 2023! As ever, bOing! is totally free to enter so you can relax and enjoy a brilliant festival day with lots of free, outdoor performances and activities. bOing is a family festival, meaning its not just for children – we programme fantastic artists from across the UK and beyond who make work for all ages.
Open to any food and drink business located in Kent, the awards have been running for nearly twenty years –making them the longest running, and most prestigious food & drink awards in the South East This year there is a new format, and the award categories have been refined into 3 key areas – Product / Taste Awards, Hospitality & Retail Awards and Business Awards. The award ceremony itself has been completely revamped and is now extended to include a Taste of Kent Festival in the afternoon, and an Oscar Style Awards Ceremony in the evening – all at the amazing University of Kent’s Gulbenkian. Finalists sampling and selling their products at the daytime festival – open to the public and guestlist of regional and national buyers – leading into an exclusive evening time ticketed awards ceremony.
AL MURRAY COMES TO CANTERBURY! The Gukbenkian is hosting comedy legend Al Murray for one night only on Wednesday 3 May at 6pm and 9pm. The show, Al Murray: Gig For Victory Tour Warm Up promises all the usual from the people’s man of the people, the Pub Landlord plus he provides people "answers to questions that they know they need, and answers to questions they never knew existed." Book tickets now!
The In Conversation series continues with the ‘Queen of Crime’, Val McDermid who will be joining Gavin Esler live in the Gulbenkian Theatre at 18.30 with doors opening at 18.00. Val McDermid has sold over 17 million books to date across the globe and is translated into more than 40 languages. She is perhaps best-known for her Wire in the Blood series, featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan, which was adapted for television starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris. She has written three other series: private detective Kate Brannigan, journalist Lindsay Gordon and, most recently, cold case detective Karen Pirie, whose debut appearance in The Distant Echo is soon to become a major ITV series.
The In Conversation series continues with Dame Prue Leith, DBE., DL who will be joining Gavin Esler live in the Gulbenkian Theatre at 18.30 with doors opening at 18.00. Prue Leith’s career has included her own restaurants, catering and cookery school businesses; she’s been a board director of companies such as British Rail, Halifax, Safeway, Whitbread, Woolworths, and Belmond (ex-Orient Express) Hotels. She has published eight novels, a memoir, Relish and 14 cookbooks. Her latest cookbook, The Vegetarian Kitchen, which she co-wrote with her niece Peta Leith, was published in 2020. Prue is probably best known for her role as a judge on The Great British Bake Off, but she has also been a judge on The Great British Menu and My Kitchen Rule
Now as much an essential part of the build up to Christmas as the local Village Christmas Bazaar or the pre-cooking of the sprouts! The Albion Christmas Show is a very popular show appealing to all ages. The tour sells out all over the country for the two weeks leading up to Christmas every year. Described in the Guardian as “the perfect antidote to the corporate Christmas”. Expect an evening of traditional English Christmas music, humourous stories and beautiful, spine-tingling Christmas carols and ballads sung by Kellie While and Simon Nicol. After weeks of the usual Christmas shopping playlists, we can guarantee no mention of Wham, Mariah or Slade! Founding member and bassist Ashley Hutchings is joined by fellow original bandmates – Fairport Convention’s own Simon Nicol on acoustic guitar and vocals, Simon Care on melodeons, and the ‘honey drenched’ divine vocals of one of the UK’s best folk singers, Kellie While.
The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge and conductor Graham Ross make their debut at Colyer Fergusson Hall with ‘What sweeter music’, a joyous and ravishing programme of festive choral masterpieces old and new. “What sweeter music” Hieronymus Praetorius’s Christmas Magnificat and Palestrina’s ‘Surge, illuminare’ sit alongside two exquisite Hymns to the Virgin by Pierre Villette and Benjamin Britten, James Long’s invigorating ‘Vigilate’, motets by Messiaen, Tavener, Will Todd, and John Rutter, and a beautiful selection of arrangements that tell us that Christmas has truly begun. Click HERE to book tickets
The In Conversation series continues with Sir Michael Morpurgo OBE, who will be joining Gavin Esler live in the Gulbenkian Theatre at 18.30 with doors opening at 18.00. Michael Morpurgo has written over 130 books, including The Butterfly Lion, Kensuke’s Kingdom, Why the Whales Come, The Mozart Question, Shadow, and War Horse, which was adapted for a hugely successful stage production by the National Theatre and then, in 2011, for a film directed by Steven Spielberg. Michael was awarded the OBE for his writing in 2006. His latest novels are When Fishes Flew (HarperCollins), Carnival of the Animals (Harper Collins) and Song of Gladness (Macmillan).
