Artsfest 2008 – a pre-emptive rummage

I found this summary of Artsfest 2008 over at CLUB:

Friday is funny light show and parade day

Saturday is fireworks day

Sunday is Kerrangfest day with the Levellers

Which is pretty good but, although the official programme’s not out yet, I’ve been having a bit of a rummage about to see what’s on.

Friday

I’ve already mentioned Light Night.  One of the buildings to be illuminated is the Town Hall which will be hosting a free event from 8pm on the Friday featuring Manga, Soweto Kinch, The Sub Ensemble and Maylight.

Also on Friday there’s the free Reggae Rockz Festival 2008 from 8pm to 11pm in Centenary Square.  Unfortunately on the Facebook event page the organisers spend all their time bleating about a lack of promotion from Artsfest and don’t get round to telling us much about what they’l be doing.  The Beat are playing, that much is sure.  The Reggae Rockz website manages to be even less informative.  Ah well.

Saturday

It looks like Dholfest 2008 is the biggie here – an attempt to break the world record for the most dhol players in one place (currently 314 players in Sandwell in 1999).  They’re aiming for 500 this time.  This one will be held in Victoria and Centenary Squares.

Meanwhile, the Custard Factory will be hosting a day of hip hop with Mylz from Heducation and Madman the Greatest down to perform.

Sunday

Sunday is Kerrangfest day with This Beautiful Thief and The Levellers the only bands I’ve spotted so far.

Across the weekend

Spaghetti Gazetti has info about the weekend’s poetry performances.

This year the ShortCuts film programme will be extended slightly, with “a more relaxed, experimental programme of films made by local and international film makers” on the Sunday and a set of fims programmed in conjunction with Deaffest across the weekend.  There’s more about those in this post from the Artsfest blog.

There’s much more to come and I’ll let you know when I see a full programme lying around the internet somewhere.