Ryde Arts Festival

Ryde Development Trust’s nine-day “arts-for-all” event encouraged groups of promoters, performers, poets, photographers, musicians, artists, schools, community groups and art experts to join together to produce an extraordinary blend of creative skills and knowledge.

The town's Victorian architecture provided the ideal backdrop to the full and varied programme of events, which ran from July 7th to the 15th. The long list of participants included many superb examples of home-grown talent, along with community arts and internationally acclaimed artists. Activities took place at venues throughout Ryde, both indoors and out.

Team Spirit

With its predominant source of funding coming from the Government’s Single Regeneration Budget, The Ryde Arts Festival was first established in 2001 as a fundamental strand to the Ryde Regeneration Strategy. The festival has grown throughout the past five years to become the largest mixed arts event on the Island.

Led by Ryde Development Trust but working together; local artists, promoters and businesses alike all helped to put together and deliver the ambitious nine-day programme which promoted talent as well as presenting challenging community arts projects, alongside internationally acclaimed artists.

Making an Impression

Irrespective of its reasonably short lifespan, the Arts Festival has helped to enhance the cultural profile of Ryde. It is estimated that more than 40,000 people either participate in, or are audience to the arts festival each year.

To add to this, almost every young person in Ryde has had some involvement in the festival either through schools, clubs, community centres or family learning groups.

Adults too have been encouraged back into learning and entering the spirit of community by offering their services as volunteers, plus valuable links have been forged amongst students from The University of Portsmouth and as far a-field as Italy and Romania.

Ryde, or Rio?

One of the main highlights of the weekend programme was the spectacular Arts Festival Parade, which this year marked the start of Ryde Arts Festival. The parade, which included entries from all of the mainstream schools in Ryde as well as several other participants, has gone from strength to strength each year under the guidance of carnival arts development workshops and courses, coupled with the growing talents and unrelenting enthusiasm of everyone involved.

The vibrant display of costumes all adhering to the 2006 theme “Let’s Celebrate” set-off on Saturday 8th July from Dover Park Primary School and followed a route down through the High Street and Union Street to the seafront where on-lookers were able to enjoy plenty more activities, including a visiting French market and live open air music.

Thousands of spectators lined the streets to watch the procession; many of them amazed by the quality of the carnival entrants and the many months of hard work and effort that had been put into designing and creating such a vibrant display of colour and energy.

To become witness to the Island’s first costumed parade to kick-start the Summer of 2006 carnival season please pay a visit to our online photo gallery.

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