Richmond Arts and Ideas Festival is back for another summer of dance, music, exhibitions, theatre and more.
After a successful pilot in 2023, Richmond Arts and Ideas Festival is returning for a full launch this June to showcase arts, culture and community. The theme for this year’s festival is Cultural Reforesting, which aims to promote positive social change and conversation by asking “how can we renew our relationship with nature?”. For two weeks, venues and public spaces across Richmond will host over 50 events including music, dance, theatre, art installations and exhibitions, as artists endeavour to answer this important question.
This year’s innovative headliners have been announced, which includes artists, activists, storytellers, scientists, and thinkers who will interpret the theme of cultural reforesting. The various events will take place across the London Borough of Richmond including three hub spaces in Richmond: The Exchange in Twickenham, OSO Arts Centre and Hampton Common.
Highlights
Tania El Khoury - Memory of Birds (13th – 15th June), a guided somatic experience, explores the political violence that literally and figuratively gets buried in contested lands.
ORIGIN (13th – 22nd June), is a deep listening experience by A Right/Left Project, combining cutting edge spatial sound design, lighting and composition. ORIGIN invites audiences into a collective deep listening experience at the cross-over between art and wellness.
The Waves are Rising (13th – 29th June), a unique Augmented Reality work which presents Raqs Media's beautiful poetry about the environment as an engaging digital performance.
Garbh (14th – 15th June), which means ‘womb’ in Gujarati, is an exhilarating outdoor participatory dance performance by Shyam Dattani.
Ackroyd & Harvey - Beuys’ Acorns Oak Circle (21st June). Ackroyd & Harvey will introduce participants to Beuys’ Acorns and the impact of German artist Joseph Beuys’ seminal artwork "7000 Oaks" on their work. The artists will encourage participation from the attendees to make placards, posters and crowns celebrating the solstice, nature and trees. They will also lead a Solstice Song Ritual led by choirmaster Philippa Snell of the Wild Choir, amongst the circle of trees
Paterson Joseph - Sancho & Me (25th June), an extraordinary story of an unlikely hero. The event is part-biography and part-dramatized readings from Paterson’s acclaimed novel The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho.
Richmond Arts and Ideas Festival Friday 13th – Sunday 29th June 2025
Full programme details Richmond Arts & Ideas Festival