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Jersey Arts Centre is celebrating a big milestone anniversary this weekend - and what better way to commemorate 35 years than with an Edinburgh Fringe-inspired festival, complete with an exhibition, dance, drama, poetry, film, music, comedy, and, of course, champagne and cake?
The Arts Centre opened its doors for the first time on 20 January 1983 and will start the celebrations with a special anniversary exhibition, produced directly onto the walls of the Berni Gallery.
Local artists, including Martin McDowell, Ian Rolls and Kerry-Jane Warner, will have only 35 hours to create their work, with only a short brief offered as inspiration. The ephemeral exhibition, titled ART 35, will open at 18:00 on Saturday and will be visible until 3 February, when the gallery walls will be painted, covering the work forever.
Video: A teaser of what's to come at the weekend-long anniversary fiesta.
Champagne, cake, speeches and a special anniversary poem will follow at 19:00 at Café Jac. Former director Rod McLoughlin and current director Daniel Austin will be present "to reminisce about the past 35 years and toast to the 35 next." At 20:00, John Lloyd CBE will take the audience on "a meander through the history of British broadcasting in the last 40-odd years."
But the evening won't stop there: 22:15 will mark the start of a revival of Mersey to Jersey, which was last performed at the 2017 Jersey Festival of Words. Inspired by the poetry collection, The Mersey Sound, a gang of local poets have created verses based on this phenomenon. A special Midnight Movie screening of the horror classic, Alien, will follow in association with Jersey Film Society.
The birthday celebrations will continue with a full day of performances on Sunday. The second day of Festival Weekend will being at 10:00 with "a thousand years from now." Directed by Daniel Austin, it will showcase the creativity of the youth theatre companies. Five young actors from the Junior Drama and youtheatre groups will take the audience on a journey to discover the tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
Pictured: The Arts Centre - including its gallery - will be in full celebratory mode all weekend.
A little bit of music will then follow with pianist Alexander Ullman who will play a selection of Tchaikovsky and Liszt. It will then be time for a little dance at 14:00 with Hagit Yakira Dance and their 'Free Falling,' "an open-hearted double bill of down-to- earth dance that's sensual, striking and a beautiful respite from the hustle and bustle."
Volker Gerling's Flipbook "thumb cinema" will be on show from 16:00, with the passionate creator presenting a selection of his favourite Portraits in Motion. The performances will continue at 18:00 with award-winning performance poet Luke Wright. His second verse play introduces Frankie Vah and deals with love, loss and belief against a backdrop of skuzzy indie venues and 80s politics.
The birthday celebrations will finally end at 20:00 with the Outside Track. Hailing from Scotland, Ireland, Cape Breton and Vancouver, its five members mix Canadian, Scottish and Irish traditional music in such a way that audiences around the world have been captured.
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