Create your Summer of culture and creativity, featuring a range of performances, exhibitions, artist-led workshops, and unique events in inspire every month.
In Gallery 1 Attenborough Arts Centre will present a major exhibition featuring work by Jenny Holzer, one of the pioneers of conceptual art, in partnership with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Known for her powerful, provocative text-based installations and creative use of electronic technology, join us to discover how the influential American artist continues to produce art that is impossible to ignore, 15 June – 29 September.
Other seasonal highlights include the upcoming Craft & Art Fair, 27 April, which supports over 50 makers and artists across the region by showcasing their incredible work to local community’s and beyond, the SEND Arts and Education Symposium, 8 May, showcasing the award-winning SENsory Atelier programme to shape the future of inclusive arts education, and Culture Talks: An Audience with Dr Gabriele Finaldi, 10 June, as the Director of the National Gallery engages in conversation with Professor David Ekserdijan. The venue will also bring back its extremely popular Family Rave Festival, 10 August. The event, themed around ‘Rebels’, takes over the entire centre with vibrant activities, inspiring workshops and electrifying performances as they turn up the volume on activism for all ages.
An exciting range of artist-led Creative Workshops and Workshops are available throughout the season including Mixed Media Space Explorations, 10 April – 22 May, where artist Peter Clayton explores how to create a sense of space using various media. Develop sculptural ideas and experiments in Experiments in Sculpture, 22 April – 8 July, or join local poet and spoken word artist Cathi Rae for Growing Your Poetic Voice, 10 May – 19 July. The Summer programme also includes a new range of one-day weekly workshops designed to encourage flexible learning including Pottery For All Workshops, Fused Glass Discovery, and Weekly Life Drawing Classes. Designed for drop-in learning, to allow audiences to enjoy new creative opportunities while still learning at their own pace.
In Good Company will be bringing their first Scratch Night of 2024 to Attenborough Arts Centre on 25 April, giving new audiences a chance to see brand-new pieces of work-in-progress shows that could go on to be the next big thing. Throughout the rest of the season, featured performances include Hannah Maxwell’s Nan, Me and Barbara Pravi, 3 May, an entirely fictional and completely true epic on care, crisis and the Eurovision Song contest. British-Ugandan singer-songwriter Daudi Matsiko performances 12 May, with his carefully crafted modern and revenant folk. Spark Festival returns, partnering with the centre to showcase Sticky Dance Show by Second Hand Dance, 24 and 25 May, where three dancers’ shimmy through audiences weaving a tapestry of sticky tape for families to explore freely. Attenborough Arts Centre also collaborates again with the University of Leicester’s Botanic Garden to bring another Shakespeare classic As You Like It with The Dukes Theatre Company, 19 and 20 June, to the unique outdoor space.
With a number of performances offered on a Pay What You Can pricing scale and with BSL interpretation, Attenborough Arts Centre remains committed to ensuring access to the arts for all.
Alongside Exhibitions, Performances and Creative Courses, Attenborough Arts Centre also runs a range of free events to engage local communities including Family Gallery Workshops each Saturday during exhibitions, free weekly Sunday Sessions in the café with creative activities from 12pm – 4pm, Soundbites Lunchtime Concerts every Tuesday and Creative Wednesdays for University of Leicester Students at the Students’ Union.
With such a range of events on offer, there is sure to be something for everyone this Summer at Attenborough Arts Centre.
Visit the Attenborough Arts Centre website for more details.
Click here to download our pdf version of our brochure listing to see the whole season.