Summer WE Wonder Festival, Bank Holiday Monday, August 28, 11.00am-5.00pm
Wentworth Woodhouse’s spectacular outdoor event, WE Wonder Festival, is set to transform the Rotherham mansion’s gardens into a rich and exotic tapestry of colour and culture on Bank Holiday Monday, 28th August. This year’s event has expanded to welcome in more of the communities which make up the diverse fabric of South Yorkshire life.
Ticket-holders can roam over 50 acres of parkland to discover a vast and vibrant line-up of theatre events, artists, musicians and workshop opportunities – from traditional English garden party favourites to Banghra beats and Kashmiri crafts.
The country house is currently the location of artist and TV personality Grayson Perry’s stunning tapestry exhibition, The Vanity of Small Differences, and this Arts Council Collection has inspired the WE Wonder festival themes of colour, fabric handicrafts and embracing diversity.
While Grayson travelled the country in search of different aspects of British life to stitch into his tapestries, the organisers of WE Wonder turned to the people of Rotherham to make its popular summer event more inclusive.
FLUX Rotherham, an Arts Council England Creative People and Places programme which engages the town’s communities in arts and culture, has pulled together a vibrant mix of community textile and art workshops for adults and children to get involved in.
Community groups have been working alongside artists from Wild Rumpus, an arts organisation who reconnect people with nature, to make four highly decorated towering textile structures which will be going onto the mansion’s West Front lawns to replicate the stone obelisks which once stood there – and are now at the Mausoleum.
Uzma Rani, calligraphy artist, is creating special signage and stunning artworks with groups and families across Rotherham to bring a sense of joy and colour to the vast site.
A workshop teaching the medieval Kashmiri art of egg-painting next to the gardens’ summer herbaceous border means children and adults can take inspiration from the English blooms as they decorate papier-mâché eggs, a tradition brought to India in the 14th century.
Visitors can take part in sessions with graffiti artist Phil Padfield, aka Affix, to create a live graffiti wall and use Pakistani Truck art techniques to transform old toy cars, and join in a mass, all-inclusive picnic on a colourful sea of ‘charder’ picnic blankets.
To develop a diverse programme for the days’ events, WWPT commissioned creative producer Sophie Akbar. Sophie, who produced the Greenwich Docklands International Festival, said: “As well as being a wonderful day out for the family with the very best street theatre and dance the UK has to offer, WE Wonder is an inclusive and diverse festival designed to attract new audiences to Wentworth’s beautiful grounds.”
“We hope to challenge people’s perceptions of where they think they belong, break down barriers and encourage them to feel as much at home in an English stately home as in their local bazaar or community hall. We hope visitors will enjoy the garden’s spaces as one community.”
A global leader of disability access in dance, Stopgap Dance Company’s performance, Frock comes to Wentworth Woodhouse thanks to Arts Council England funding. Set to original musical compositions, dancers perform an uplifting dance which explodes into a ‘punkish’ celebration of individuality and difference.
Interactive outdoor spectacle FLOOD aims to highlight the health of the world’s oceans through the eyes of Britain’s coastal communities. Incorporating circus themes, music and acrobatics, Theatre Temoin equips visitors with personalised sound umbrellas and takes them on an adventure to find out how climate change and pollution are making coastlines and communities ‘seasick’.
Visitors can also expect to see Mughal Miniatures, a dance piece inspired by the tradition of miniature-painting in Indian and Persian cultures, which will see peacocks and antelopes roaming and jousting around the gardens, and artworks by disabled Yorkshire artist Jason Wilsher-Mills in the Pillared Hall.
The Balbir Singh Dance Company will be entertaining with nature-inspired storytelling, there’s also ska, calypso, reggae and rock ‘n’ roll music from Hot Dinners by Skiband and folk songs, Bollywood hits, Bhangra beats, pop, sci-fi and intergalactic funk from the Rajasthan Heritage Brass Band.
