“As a principal location for business, creativity and culture, Midtown BID are delighted to support this year’s Bloomsbury Festival through our participation as a sponsor.
The spirit and ingenuity into how the festival events have been tailored and indeed transformed in-light of the current climate is a true testament of not just Bloomsbury but the wider Midtown district’s resilience and determination for renewal and prosperity.”
Debbie Akehurst
Interim CEO, Midtown BID
Established in 2006, Bloomsbury Festival is a creative explosion of arts, culture and science. For five days each October, the streets, parks, museums, galleries, laboratories and public and private buildings of this vibrant cultural quarter play host up to 130 events which attract a significant audience from across London and beyond.
With a unique blend of academic institutions, businesses, cultural organisations and diverse communities, Bloomsbury has been a catalyst for ideas that have had impact across the world for hundreds of years. Bloomsbury Festival celebrates contemporary Bloomsbury; a hotbed of creativity and pioneering development which has one of the youngest and most diverse populations in the country.
The Festival works with many large and small partners to create and deliver its annual programme. More than simply a showcase for the area, instead Bloomsbury Festival acts as a catalyst bringing together artists and academics, scientists and dancers, musicians, publishers and school pupils to make new projects and to inspire and learn from each other.
“We are delighted to have the support of Midtown BID for the 2020 Bloomsbury Festival. The BID’s support, alongside that of other local institutions and businesses, enables the festival to go ahead in a very difficult year for the arts and culture. As a festival team we have been planning how we best deliver the festival activities to allow for the changing times, and as a new partner we know that Midtown BID is there to support our work with local partners in arts, culture, business and community. We are entering a new era for cultural life in the country, and locally, and the strength of our engagement with local partners is vital to help us all create a new vision for the future”.
Rosemary Richards
Festival Director
2020 FESTIVAL – FRIDAY 16 > 25 OCTOBER
Working with partners from across Bloomsbury’s diverse academic, professional and resident community the Bloomsbury Festival 2020: Vision theme will act as a catalyst to a wide spectrum of events from the arts and science of the visual world, to perception and futurology. Alongside a host of visual creative projects and amazing scientific discoveries, the 2020 programme will turn Bloomsbury inside out, making visible the parts and people rarely seen.
Festival events will meet audiences’ new expectations and government guidelines relating to live events and will be delivered with the safety and enjoyment of artists, participants, audiences and our local community at their heart. Our events will be presented by a range of means – digitally, live and socially distanced.