To help you plan your day, here is the schedule for the day – come along and say hello to the us in the Fiesta tent in St Samson’s Square!

The Temporary Market will be brought to us by OUI Performance, which is an independent Contemporary Arts Organisation, based in York and run by the very lovely and very talented Nathan Walker and Victoria Gray. They’ll be working with lots of different people to bring this event to life, including artists from the Art Bloc, and York’s Contemporary Art Collective. You can find out more about them at their website or their Facebook page.

So make sure you get down to Newgate Market (it’s between Parliament Street and the Shambles) at some point during the day to check out this very exciting, unique, and quite simply intriguing local talent. We certainly will!

Fun, colorful, wacky and creative is the name of the day and everyone is invited to take part and help create York’s temporary inside garden.

The creative vision behind it all is the wonderful Donna Tayler and she certainly seems excited and inspired about what can be created. So when asked some questions about herself and project here’s exactly what she had to say!

“Hi – I’m the artist working on Fiesta this year – it’s proving to be
a great project to work on as there are at least 11 different
community groups involved so far – people of all ages too…

Dragonflies, flowers, birds, and bees are all in the process of being
created, so our “Wonderland” is certainly going to be a real
menagerie of creatures of all shapes and sizes – and it’s definitely
going to be a riot of colour……

I kind of have a rough idea of how the final thing will look, but
with so many people involved it’s quite difficult to envisage exactly
how it will look until everything finally comes together on Saturday
5th June…….you will just have to come on down and check it out
for yourselves then. There will also be an opportunity on that day
for you to make something and add it to the garden!”

Clearly Wonderland’s going to be something amazing at Fiesta, and all of us here can’t wait to see how it will all turn out!

As a reminder, and something to write on the calendars and in your diaries, here are the dates where you can get involved, and make your own mark:

Saturday 22 May      1 – 4pm at St Luke’s Church Hall, Shipton Street
Tuesday 25 May      6 – 9pm at Burtonstone Community Centre
Tuesday 1 June      10am – 1pm at Space 109, Walmgate

The creation of a giant flower using willow and tissue paper. Photo courtesy of Andrew Lightfoot

Colourful bunting, made by local people to decorate Fiesta! Photo courtesy of Andrew Lightfoot.

People have been making butterflies, dragonflies, loads of flowers, fabric bunting and ‘garden scenery’ – but we want MORE from all your creative York folk!

The workshops listed below are free and open to everyone, and children are welcome to come along with an adult and join in to.  Just drop us a line to york.fiesta@york.gov.uk and we’ll see you there! 

Monday 17 May      6 – 9pm at Explore Acomb Library
Saturday 22 May      1 – 4pm at St Luke’s Church Hall, Shipton Street
Tuesday 25 May      6 – 9pm at Burtonstone Community Centre
Tuesday 1 June      10am – 1pm at Space 109, Walmgate

We think one of the best ways to get people to stick around is to make them an offer they can’t refuse – which is where all you lovely local businesses come in!

If you have an offer you’d like to make to promote your business to people coming along to Feista, we’ll promote it for you absolutely free of charge! 

Could be 10% on the day, might be a free coffee with any cake, might be free entry for under19s.  Who knows - you’re creative people, you tell us what you’d like promote!

If you fancy getting involved, or would like to talk about your ideas for offers, drop a line to katie.pask@york.gov.uk or give her call on 01904 553397.

Great!

Then you should come along to this year’s finale at Fiesta – a great big salsa evening in Parliament Street at our Main Stage between 6.30 – 8.30pm.

It really doesn’t matter if you’re more John Sargeant than Twinkletoes, bring a friend along and have a go.  Last year, hundreds of people joined in, so don’t be a wall flower and miss out! 

The fabulous Bourbon Y Tequila will be bringing along their own special salsa sound, and there’ll even be a salsa teacher on hand to help you perfect your moves.

This year’s festival will feature a ‘Magical Wonderland Garden’, and the Fiesta team are getting members of the public to get involved in making it! Two workshops are taking place as part of the project, and you can help create all sorts of things, including flowers, butterflies, dragonflies, ‘trees’, garden scenes and lots of other garden/nature objects and creatures. The artist leading the project will be using a variety of media – from paper to paint, wire and fabric, so even if you don’t consider yourself an ‘artist’ there should still be plenty of things to spark your interest! All the creations will then become a part of of the garden at Fiesta on Saturday 5 June.

 Workshops are taking part on…

 Wednesday 5 May, 6 – 9pm at St Luke’s Church Hall

and

Tuesday 25 May, 6 – 9pm at Burtonstone Community Centre

 If you fancy joining in and helping us create Fiesta, drop an email to york.fiesta@york.gov.uk telling us your name and which session you’d like to come along to and we’ll add you to the list!

On the day, you can come along and see the creativity of local people and professional artists as well as get involved in activities yourself. From a performance by the amazing acrobatic group Mimbre, to community salsa in the streets; from space to chill out at the Wonderland Garden to storytelling on the Library Lawn, we can only ask ‘who wouldn’t want to join in?!’

With the site now up and running you can use the tabs above to find out for yourself just what is going on.

We’ll be constantly updating this blog to tell you all about the fun, exciting and often silly things that you can see and do. Want to know more about Mimbre, Doodle Manifesto or the Wonderland garden or get in touch to find out about all the groups and clubs that meet in York? Then stop by this blog as we reveal more about the events, discuss how the Fiesta plans are progressing and all the creativity that goes into setting it up.