Excitement is building for this year’s Peterborough Celebrates Festival as the first professional acts are announced.
The region’s biggest free, family-friendly, community festival at Ferry Meadows will be celebrating all the brilliant things about the city but will also bring us some touring acts for the big weekend of May 17 – 18.
Giant walkabout butterflies, an acrobatic display with bamboo and an interactive pop-up play installation will all be wowing festival-goers.
No Fit State, an acrobatic performance group will bring us their high-impact, high-skill circus show Bamboo, using UK grown bamboo and human bodies.
Feet off the Ground, a women-only group will perform Turning Point, an evocative performance on a purpose-built rotating stage.
Vanhulle Dance Theatre, the Cambridgeshire-based dance duo, return to the festival for the third year with their show Orb, fusing highly physical contemporary dance with martial arts and an emotive sound score.
Pif-Paf touring theatre bring their creative interactive installation Right to Play to the festival site and the dramatic scale and colourful wing designs of walkabout butterflies from Apus.
Many local community performers and festival favourites are returning this year, including Indian dancing from the Peterborough Diwali Festival, traditional brass band music from the Peterborough Salvation Army, Peterborough Rock Choir, Wansford Ukes and Gabriella Pineda Rodrigues, with her ever popular Disney and show tunes.
The bar tent stage, introduced last year for the first time, is being expanded this year and will host a wide range of musical performers throughout the festival weekend.
As well as the many music, drama and dance performances, the festival will offer a varied programme of other entertainment and activity to get involved in across the weekend – from arts and crafts, sport and adventure to local organisations showcasing what they do in the city, there will be something for all the family to enjoy.
New for 2025, they are introducing exciting ticketed events in the Big Top on the evenings of Friday May 16 and Saturday May 17, when the main festival has finished.
The Friday will host two ‘Boogie in the Big Top’ silent disco sessions. Expect live DJs, multi-channel head phones, tunes to get everyone in the party mood in a magical festival atmosphere.
Saturday evening will see ‘Bhangra in the Big Top’ - an East meets West dance party, hosted by the nationally-renowned group Punjabi Roots Academy. Expect remixes from Bhangra Beyoncé to Bollywood Rihanna, an International DJ, loud & proud dhol drummers and colourful bhangra dancers.
The full line up is still being developed, but will be shared soon on the festival website: www.peterboroughcelebratesfestival.co.uk