Hold on to your hats, we have lift-off. The seventeenth edition of the Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus runs 28th to 31st May 2025 – and it is the biggest yet. Dorothy Max Prior previews this year’s bumper edition
‘Out There Festival 2025 is especially significant in terms of international partnership, across Europe and beyond,’ says the Festival’s artistic director Joe Mackintosh, noting that this year’s bumper event will also play host to FRESH street – an international conference on street arts hosted in collaboration with Circostrada.
‘And that’s why we’ve put our heads on the block and found every penny we can to make it the best programme possible!’
In fact, this year’s line-up will make it the biggest outdoor arts programme every seen in the UK, with 60 companies taking part – 17 international companies, 18 world or UK premieres, and more than 150 performances, events and artworks, engaging over 50,000 people. Not bad for a small town in one of the most deprived areas in England…
Like Stockton International Riverside Festival, also set in a deprived working-class town, Out There has proved that you can develop and nurture audiences for inspirational circus and outdoor arts work – and that you can instigate inspirational community-based programmes that are not only inclusive but maintain high artistic standards.
Inclusion and participation have always been crucial elements of Out There Festival in Great Yarmouth. Long, long before Arts Council England came up with their Let’s Create! mandate, Out There were – well, out there, doing it. The Festival programme has always balanced out presenting accessible circus and outdoor arts shows that please the local audience with the best of national and international work on the circuit. And indeed, most of the work presented does both of those things at once!
Much of the Festival’s success lies in the fact that Out There is far more than a week-long festival: it is a year-round organisation, based at the Drill House in Great Yarmouth, which hosts a rolling programme of residencies, a youth circus school, community classes, and events of all sorts; and engages approximately 110,000 individuals, including 4,000 school children, each year. The relationship with local schools being one reason for last year moving the Festival to May half-term week, allowing for a programme of engagement with schools to take place in the lead-up.
Executive director Veronica Stephens stresses the importance of what she calls ‘place making’, and says that elements of participation are at the heart of much of the work presented – which could mean participation in the moment, in the classic street theatre sense of audience interaction; or could mean engagement before the show, community ‘takeovers’ or communities involved in co-creating the content of the work with artists.
Veronica flags up Kinetika’s Beach of Dreams as an example of a wonderful community project with high artistic standards.

For this multi-artform project, Out There in Great Yarmouth are one of three East Coast Coastal Heritage sites (the others are Harwich and Orford Ness) engaged in an exploration of the role that the shifting coastline plays in shaping our collective dreams. We are invited to ‘embark on a journey through the stories, creativity, and heritage that define the communities of three unique locations’.
This collaborative story-gathering project, funded by Historic England, invites participants to work with artists to explore the unique coastal histories that have shaped these places. The project – developed and directed by writer Belona Greenwood and digital artist and film-maker Mark Hannant – forges connections across generations, amplifying voices that reflect the deep, evolving relationship between people and the ever-changing coast.
Those stories will be translated into silk pennant designs and digital content – inspiring written work, drawing, and photographs created by a team of artists. The pennants will form part of the Beach of Dreams national commission and will be displayed during events and walks from 28 to 30 May, as part of Out There Festival.
The flags will be created in collaboration with Kinetika, expert silk flag-makers and pioneers of community-driven art and design. There will also be the Kinetika Bloco – an exuberant mix of young brass and woodwind players, drummers, steel pan players, and dancers all in costume – which, on Friday 30th May at at 4pm, will lead a procession from the Drill House down to the Beach of Dreams Village, where over 800 flags will be displayed.

This Beach Village will also host a number of other shows, and a Climate Cafe which will be a hub for talks, meetings and informal discussions. There are three different projects that use bamboo – a highly sustainable material – sited at The Beach Village. NoFit State Circus will present their show – called Bamboo, appropriately enough – on Friday 30th and Saturday 31st – a spectacular high-impact, highly-skilled outdoor circus production using only bamboo and human bodies, revealing the fragility and beauty of our interconnected and interdependent life on this planet.
Then, there are two installations happening throughout the Festival: Bamboology’s Bamboo Playground and Compagnie Moso’s Morphosis, which they describe as ‘the participatory construction of a climbing archi-structure made of bamboo’. It uses hundreds of selected bamboo canes on legs; the bamboo cut and prepared for maximum resistance, with the addition of reused bicycle inner tubes for assembly.
The Beach Village will also host the Young Out There (YOT) stage for budding musicians; the ever-popular African Choir of Norwich; and Joli Vyann, who present Drop Me If You Dare, an exhilarating dance and acrobatic duet about the connection between two people, exploring the elements of strength and submission, weakness and control, within their relationship.
Another exciting development for this year’s Out There Festival is the first ever show to be presented in the newly renovated Ice House. In Solarte Producciones’ Siku, Swiss/Catalan artist Jessica Arpin Olar will take us on on a journey through the Arctic of yesteryear, inviting us to ‘relive the age of polar exploration through the first woman to reach the North Pole by bicycle’. We are promised aerial and ground acrobatics, featuring a hanging Chinese pole; daring bicycle tricks; and a circus polar bear!

Siku is one of five shows in the Festival that are part of a Catalan focus (Out There have a longstanding relationship with Catalonian artists and companies, many of whom have appeared at the Festival over the years).
Another is Miss Margarita, which like Siku is presented by Solarte Producciones – this time outdoors, in the Market Place area, which was off-limits for the Festival for a year or two due to building works, but now restored.
Then, here’s the legendary street theatre show Kamchàtka, which gives us eight characters lost in the city, each carrying their own suitcase. Who could they be? The game they play ‘is so subtle it could be mistaken for reality’. It is precisely there on this borderline between everyday life and performance where a space for dialogue opens, as the spectator becomes an active part of the exchange and the experimentation. Kamchàtka eventually turns into a mirror; a mirror of our behaviour towards ‘the Other, the Foreign, the Different’. It is a show that has become ever more relevant with the passing of the years, in these days of obsession with and fear around difference…
Los Galindos give us MDR (Mort de Rire) aka Death from Laughter, described as ‘a farce to disturb and entertain’. From the write-up, I’m presuming elements of Dark Clown or even Bouffon take the upper hand: ‘Melon, Mardi and Rossinyol face an unexpected conflict. Their untamed and clumsy nature and the need to exist take them to an improbable show, where they freely explore any atrocity. This hilarious and terrifying experience transmits the story of a truthful and rough friendship, caused by a sense of responsibility and of guilt. An improbable crime, a suspicious trial and an absurd punishment. As a paradox, they might cause the desire to die from laughter.’
This is presented at St Nicolas’s School and is one of a number of ticketed indoor shows that are part of the programme:
“We’re expanding the ticketed indoor part of the programme,’ says Joe, ‘but the free outdoor programme remains at the heart of the Festival’.
Also indoors, this time at St George’s Theatre, is the fifth Catalan show, La Mecànica – A Teen Odyssey which is described as ‘an immersive theatre experience, blending live physical performance and digital technology to exploring themes of personal identity, intergenerational connection, and how we find our tribes. The innovative Kalliôpé app uses the audience’s mobile phones as the catalyst for interaction’.
Another thread running through this year’s programme is the number of shows by female-led companies.

Big Wolf Company’s Three Sisters is a performance that talks about the great women of the Baltic countries – highlighting their tenderness and strength. The team researched old Baltic traditions about marriage, women’s roles in the home, what type of a woman was desired in olden times and how that has changed (or not!) in modern times. The show uses dance and the aerial disciplines of hammock and hoop, combined with witty comedy and sharp social criticism.
Then, there’s Cia Jimena Cavalletti with B.O.B.A.S. which Joe describes as ‘three very, very good female clowns’.
The title is an acronym for ‘Beneficial Orchestral Band for Sepulchral Acts’; and the theatrical device is that they are a humble musical band that organises burial ceremonies; but on this occasion the priest and the deceased person haven’t arrived. During the wait ‘discomfort and disaster ensues as the three musicians spiral out of control in catastrophic and hilarious ways’. Street theatre shows that incorporate a mock funeral are always a winner, in my experience!
ElevateHer, by Daughters of the Dust, reveals female struggles and strengths, as played out on three multi-height tight-wire rigs. Redefining traditional tight-wire walking, the cast share their stories and experiences through circus, physical theatre and spoken word. We are promised ‘unapologetic joy, defiance, beauty and strength’.
Another all-female company, La Triochka, comprises three artists of different ages. Their show, TopDown, ‘questions roles, the places we take with us and the places we leave behind’ and talks about ‘the relations of domination and submission in the social field, whether at work or in everyday life’.
There is also perennial favourite Dulce Duca with Um Belo Dia: ‘a dreamlike, metaphoric and surrealistic piece’, using physical theatre, dance, live music, and – of course – the every-which-way juggling and balancing of clubs.
It would seem that dreams are another thread running through the programme. Not just Duca, The Beach of Dreams and Jones & Barnard’s Dream Tours, but also Hocus Pocus Theatre and their Dream Machine, a rove-about show featuring a quadracycle. Here’s what they are offering: ‘The Dream Team have been collecting and sorting all kinds of dreams, ready for their rounds. A positive postal service that promises to deliver a smile to your face and some hope to your heart’.
The big evening show of the Festival, presented on Friday 30th and Sat 31st at 9pm, is AIthentic by Gorilla Circus, a British company that has been consistently nurtured and supported over recent years by Out There Arts. Gorilla Circus are one of a number of UK companies who have been consistently commissioned and programmed by the Festival over the years, with others including local favourites Cocoloco who are also returning to Yarmouth for the 2025 line-up.
Talking of AIthentic, Joe says: ‘It’s a co-commission – building on our relationship with the company, in which community participation is a key element.’
The show invites us to explore what we want our relationship with technology to be, and how we could achieve that. It’s a collaboration between Gorilla Circus, When Time was New, and Citrus Arts and merges circus, street dance and technology.

Other British companies featured in the Festival include one of longest established and best in the business, Avanti Display, with a new show called Crow.
Taking the form of a music concert, Crow begins at twilight, with three musicians arriving for a gig. As the light fades, the atmosphere begins to change. An inventive music score is interrupted by ridiculous acts of conjuring – more Tommy Cooper than David Blane. Reality seems to warp. When full darkness falls, sleight of hand and video projection expand this comic and curious world, suggesting ideas both profound and absurd.
The show, conceived by Avanti’s Bill Palmer, was created in collaboration with many legendary names in UK street arts, including Lou Glanfield of IOU and Mark Long from People Show, with performers including Chris Squire and Pascale Straiton.
Another exciting new UK show is CODE, Justice in Motion’s urban odyssey into county lines and knife crime, described as ‘an electrifying blend of physical theatre, parkour, trials bike stunts, and live rap music’. Set on an urban playground, this production thrusts audiences into the raw realities faced by young people exploited by organised drug crime gangs.
Then there is Truth! – a collaboration between Ramshacklicious and Hijinx – a roving outdoor performance by a five-strong ensemble of playful troublemakers. It is, we are told, ‘a Dadaist take on a brighter future; a gentle call to action, a quiet rebellion’.
The British contingent also includes favourites such as The Bureau of Silly Ideas (BOSI) and Matthew Harrison – local boy made good – with his Actual Reality Arcade.

Also raising the flag for Old Blighty comes Jones & Barnard and their Dream Tours – a walking tour of ‘sensation-stocked’ Great Yarmouth that ‘brings local people’s dreams to life’. The tour will feature the famous seaside attractions of the town alongside lesser-known backstreet places and reimagine them with live performance. The show builds on the success of last year’s Golden Tours, also a promenade show.
‘Despite their immense experience in the sector, this is the first time ever Jones & Barnard have received Arts Council England funding,’ says Joe, saying that they were commissioned to work with local communities in Yarmouth about their dreams and memories of the town, material which is then incorporated into the show.
‘Community participation is a big emphasis in this edition of the Festival,’ says Joe, pointing out that some of this is in unexpected ways – Siku, for example, was devised after research with Canadian Inuit communities living in the Arctic.

Closer to home, Veronica adds that a lot of Out There work that has been created with local communities and through collaborations with the Creative People and Places programme, Freshly Greated.
She cites as an example Up Our Street which will take over St Peter’s Plain, right outside Out There’s headquarters and Festival hub, the Drill House.
Veronica tells me that this project is a result of a programme of year-round engagement and consultation with the local community. ‘It’s part of a longer programme of urban transformation of streets, and focuses on community-led pop-up art-making and participation’.
From midday each day of the Festival, the St Peter’s Plain will be filled with sand, deck chairs, and plants – and decorated by its residents and their neighbours to make it a brighter and livelier place. The street will be jam-packed with workshops, activities and performances for everyone to get involved in.
As for the rest of the programme, Joe tells me that there is no Party in the Park as such this year, with a music stage moved down to the Beach of Dreams Village. Instead, the park will become a mini fire-garden, with Out There’s very own Eyeful Tower and Sonic Weeds alongside pyrotechnic maestros such as Paka the Uncredible and Eddie Egal giving us fire-dragons, snakes and a giant baboon!

As if that all wasn’t enough to be programming and producing, Out There 2025 will also play host to the FRESH international conference, co-created with Circostrada, Europe’s leading outdoor arts and circus organisation.
‘Out There was built on EU project funding, long before we became an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation,’ says Joe. ‘Now, we are an international gateway: we have around 350 delegates from all over the world coming to FRESH, including most of Europe, Mexico, Senegal, Japan, South Africa, Canada, and India – five continents represented!’
Keynote speakers and contributors include director Vicki Dela Amedume of Upswing and The Albany; Ali Pretty of Kinetika; and musician, artist and activist Brian Eno, wearing his Hard Art (hard) hat.
Some of the questions the conference will be addressing include:
Is the outdoor arts as a force for alternative ways of living and thinking dead? What does ‘community-led’ and ‘community co-created’ mean? What will the planet look like in the next 25 years? How will we respond to the future as artists, organisations and places? And how do we take back more of the public space for the public?
All of this will be explored in the fabulous environment that is The Hippodrome, the UK’s oldest and only surviving purpose-built circus venue.
At a point in time when politicians are describing us as an ‘island of strangers’ it feels vital that international events of this sort are taking place – a space for the exchange of ideas and the generation of new relationships across borders.
And it feels important that it is happening in Great Yarmouth, as part of a festival dedicated to free and accessible art for all; rather than in an elite space in a chic metropolitan milieu.
Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts & Circus gives us its biggest-ever event this year and is offering something for everyone.
‘Dream on’ is the key message. Together we can be the change we want to see in the world – with artists taking the lead.

Featured image (top): Circus Piddly featuring Sam Goodburn.
Out There Arts produce the annual Out There International Festival of Street Arts & Circus – now in its 17th year and one of the three largest free Outdoor Arts festivals in the UK – with 30-50+ artistic companies and audiences of 60,000+.
Out There Arts – National Centre for Outdoor Arts & Circus is a registered charity and Arts Council England funded National Portfolio Organisation.
FRESH STREET is to be hosted in the UK for the first and only time as part of the 2025 Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus. Mark your calendars for May 28-29-30-31, 2025
An important and flagship conference for the outdoor arts and circus sector, FRESH will bring together key European and international artists, programmers, and policymakers for three days of dynamic discussions and stimulating exchanges on how we can imagine the outdoor arts of tomorrow.
FRESH STREET#5 is co-organised by Circostrada Network and Out There Arts in the frame of Out There Festival, in partnership with Outdoor Arts UK.
FRESH Street #5 will springboard a three year international and UK reciprocal exchange network programme. A collaborative and creative opportunity to revitalise the exchange of world-class, tourable, quality outdoor work and innovate the outdoor arts as an effective means to engage with communities.