Arts Festival set to begin

Buy photos » Sir Roy Strong will be opening the exhibition tomorrow. (s)

BROADWAY Arts Festival promises something for everyone when it gets underway tomorrow (Saturday).

The event, which runs until next Sunday (June 17), will host a major art exhibition, garden tours, a children's flower parade and play, a wide range of music concerts and even a cricket match.

The 2012 festival's showpiece is the exhibition at Haynes Fine Art called Country Gardens: John Singer Sargent RA, Alfred Parsons RA and their contemporaries.

It features more than 20 oils and watercolours by renowned 19th-century artist and garden designer Alfred Parsons RA who is this year's featured artist along with important works by John Singer Sargent, Lawrence Alma Tedema, John Constable, Lucien Pissaro and a number of others.

The exhibition will be unveiled by Britain’s favourite polymath Sir Roy Strong tomorrow at 10am and will remain open till the end of the festival.

Sir Roy Strong will also be contributing to the garden element of the Festival, talking about his own “Laskett Gardens”, the largest private formal gardens established in England since 1945, which he and his late wife, the designer Dr Julia Trevelyan Oman, have created from a four-acre field over the last four decades.

For the first time in decades, the gardens of Russell House and Court Farm will be open to the public, offering a rare opportunity to view some of Alfred Parsons’ garden design, preceded by talks given by landscape historian and designer Marion Mako.

For youngsters, there will be a performance of Peter Pan, written by J M Barrie and enacted by local school children from Broadway and Moreton-in-Marsh.

Schoolchildren will also be the stars of the Children’s Parade which takes place tomorrow. In line with the gardening element of this year’s Festival, all the children are being asked to make their own flowers to carry down the High Street.

The music events taking place throughout the nine-day festival vary widely, accounting for different tastes, but all involve local artists.

There will be a violin concert performed by Michael Bochmann with harpist David Watkins in the 19th-century St Michael’s and All Angels Church, as well as Jazz on the Green with Debbie Arthurs, from Malvern, and a special appearance from Cheltenham’s very own Vince Freeman of the BBC’s The Voice.

For more information, including a fully programme of events for the Broadway Arts Festival, visit the website www.broadwayartsfestival.com.

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