Creative Summer season announced at Attenborough Arts Centre

Create your summer of culture and creativity with Attenborough Arts Centre’s new season, which features a range of inspiring exhibitions, performances, artist-led Creative Courses and events.

Attenborough Arts Centre will present a major exhibition of the work of 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, the influential American artist continues to produce art that is impossible to ignore. The ARTIST ROOMS Jenny Holzer exhibition runs 15 June – 29 September.

Meanwhile, Attenborough Arts Centre will welcome Dr Gabriele Finaldi, the Director of the National Gallery, on 10 June, who will discuss his work with the University of Leicester’s Professor David Ekserdijan in a unique event entitled Culture Talks.

Attenborough Arts Centre always presents a range of live performances across genres and this season is no different. Hannah Maxwell’s Nan, Me and Barbara Pravi, 3 May, is an entirely fictional and completely true epic on care, crisis and the Eurovision Song contest. Meanwhile, British-Ugandan singer-songwriter Daudi Matsiko will bring his carefully crafted modern and reverant folk on 12 May. Spark Festival for children and families returns with 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 in a unique installation.

Attenborough Arts Centre will also bring outdoor theatre back to the University of Leicester’s Botanic Garden this summer. The Garden will become the Forest of Arden for the classic Shakespeare comedy, As You Like It, 19 and 20 June, presented by Dukes Theatre Company, with a production of the popular children’s story book Errol’s Garden all about the love of growing plants, for audiences aged 3-11 and their grown-ups, 20 and 21 July.

With a number of performances offered on a Pay What You Can pricing scale and BSL interpretation, Attenborough Arts Centre remains committed to ensuring access to the arts for all.

Attenborough Arts Centre will also present a range of special events this summer. Showcasing talent development, In Good Company will bring 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 by artists who could go on to be the next big thing.

Attenborough Arts Centre’s ever-popular Craft & Art Fair, 27 April, enables visitors to meet and support over 50 makers and artists across the region who will be selling a wide range of art and crafts.

The venue will also bring back its extremely popular Family Rave Festival, 10 August. The event, themed around ‘Rebels’, will take over the entire centre with vibrant activities, inspiring workshops and electrifying performances as they turn up the volume on activism for families and children of all ages.

An exciting range of artist-led Creative Courses 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, drop-in learning including Pottery For All Workshops, Fused Glass Discovery, and Weekly Life Drawing Classes.

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 from 2-4pm on Wednesdays during term time.

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.