By: Edward Grey
Submitted: 2008-09-14 16:43:10 | Word Count: 514
During the month of May, the city of Bournemouth is ablaze with merry making as people celebrate the Fire Festival. The Fire Festival, held annually on the 12th of May at Meyrick Park, is a celebration of art and music, showcasing fire themed exhibits and live performances featuring a diverse mix of music. Performances will be seen at two innovative stages that the organizers have constructed especially for the event.
Fire is the central theme of this festival and activities include artwork inspired by this element, ranging from photography to installation art. People can view these at a huge fire art arena. There are also fire performance groups and circus type performers displaying their juggling acts, fire hula hoops, fire eating and other similar performances.
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The festival promises to be a thrilling event with different fire performance groups delivering brilliant presentations. Among the groups slated to perform are FenFire UK, Combust, Brite Sparx, Trickswop, Emilia and the local group F.LA.M.E. The best in visual fire art will also be showcased by Katie Hawker for installation art and sculpture, RJ Fernandez, Nadja Oberdoerfer , Marcus Voss for photography, Richard Maddalena for performance art, Katja Gless, as costume artist, Eleanor Reed for installation art, Ben Dix, whose work covers photography, animation and film, Eamon al Nawa for mixed media art and many others.
The musical shows are a truly diversified mix of entertainment covering the genres of rock and roll, gypsy, hoedown, blues, ska, swing, jive, hillbilly and psychobilly to name a few. Bands performing at the festival include the Glitzy Bag Hags, Kid Carpet, Vincent Vincent and the Villain and Cut a Shine. DJs and other live musical performances are also expected to add spice to the party scene.
Although the event revolves around the medium of fire, there are also other main attractions that it will offer. Among them is the World Food Village and the market stalls. The World Food Village is where people can go from stall to stall to sample cuisines from around the globe. The stalls are located in a themed dining area complete with bands performing acoustic, skiffle and street music.
The market stalls sell all sorts of souvenir items like uniquely designed jewelry and fun circus toys. People can also visit Eco Arcadia, a biodiesel fueled pinball arcade.
For those eager to explore new things, the festival also offers a number of workshops for those wanting to learn performance art, circus skills featuring poi and staff, hula hoop skills, workshops on developing a positive outlook and self care, dance, poetry, cooking and even unusual workshops like African Drumming and Didgeridoo.
Being a fire themed celebration the festival also offers a fire safety demonstration in cooperation with the city s fire brigade that will educate attendees about fire safety issues.
The festival promotes climate change and its proceeds go to charities that likewise promote this. The event aims to be the first completely carbon neutral event in Dorset in keeping with its advocacy of environmental development and thereby offers spectators information on how to reduce carbon emissions.
