Hollie McNish – part of the Where Are We Now? festival
UK City of Culture for next year, Hull 2017 continues to roll out its programme, Getintothis’ Cath Bore has the details.
Hull’s UK City of Culture celebrations in 2017 are set to encompass four weekend-long festivals. WOW (Women of the World) in March will focus on gender equality, while an examination of Freedom and Freedoms in a global context takes place in in early September. Substance, during December, looks to focus upon the significance of the North framed within a cultural context, along with Where Are We Now? part of the Hull 2017 Roots & Routes season in June.
Where Are We Now? is a collection of spoken word, free thought and expression and musical events, and features film screenings, discussions, street theatre, poetry, visual art from agitators from across Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Akala, Bill Drummond, Andrew Weatherall, Young Fathers, Charlotte Church, Sean Johnston, Jamie Reid, Chester P, Hollie McNish, The Four Owls, and Mark Cousins all join the party. It is curated by the Neu! Reekie! collective and takes place 2 – 4 June 2017.
Neu! Reekie! have developed a manifesto for the festival:
“Where Are We Now?’ will be a summer festival like no other: a gathering of time-served trouble-makers, spoken word rebels, artistic mavericks and leftfield music pioneers. We’ll be converging on the city of Hull to ask of today’s counter-culture the soaring, searching question with which David Bowie kissed us goodbye.
The UK has reached a crossroads. Where it goes next is anyone’s guess. Dark divisive forces of racism and prejudice are stirring across the UK (and Europe) in the wake of Brexit and across the Atlantic following the election of Donald Trump. We need to ask our artists, musicians & writers where they stand.
For detached hipster unicyclists or stay-at-home clicktavists this may not be your time or place for we promise to ruffle feathers, take to the streets, challenge the dominant narratives, and counterpose Love to Hate.
Convening the radical fusion will be one of the UK’s most acclaimed and exciting artistic collectives. With counter-cultural roots going back through the last 25 years – to the legendary Rebel Inc publishing house – Neu! Reekie! intend to take the pulse of the cultural resistance across the UK and its four nations. And have some fun involving the good people of Hull.
Come together. Ask questions. Listen & watch. Dance. Shake things up.”
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