Consortium Partners
Without Walls is a partnership of 36 England-based festivals that work together through three networks:
The Without Walls Artistic Directorate (AD): Some of the UK’s most regarded outdoor arts and performance specialists. The Artistic Directorate annually invests commissioning funds into a programme of new outdoor shows that go on and tour across the UK and internationally. This process ensures an influx of new shows for the outdoor arts sector and helps nurture the talent and skills of those working in the sector.
The Touring Network Partnership (TNP): A network of festivals of all shapes and sizes across the UK in areas without regular arts activity. Without Walls works with these partners to create an appetite for outdoor arts across the country. The project builds off the impact of Without Walls’ highly influential Associate Touring Network.
The Creative Development Network (CDN): A group of festivals that Without Walls provides mentorship and development support to in the context of helping to develop new outdoor arts programmes.
For existing Without Walls partners please click here to access the portal.

101 Outdoor Arts Creation Space
Artistic Directorate Partner
The Corn Exchange Newbury’s dedicated outdoor arts creation space, hosting residencies by professional artists and companies, and developing its own outdoor work. 101 runs a year-round programme of community engagement and professional development activities.
Based within a 10,000 square ft warehouse, 101 has fabrication workshop facilities, a large and flexible rehearsal/production space, on-site accommodation and living facilities. 101 aims to give a supportive environment for companies in residence to develop new work.
All in the Mind Festival
Creative Development Partner
All in the Mind (AITM) is a free one-day performing arts festival, in Eastrop Park Basingstoke. AITM uses the arts to stimulate conversations and share experiences around mental health. The festival programme includes a vibrant, eclectic mix of theatre, dance, visual art, spoken word and music created by professional and emerging artists. Alongside this programme of arts events are participatory and education projects that are designed to ensure that local communities remain at the heart of the festival.
All in the Mind is produced by Fluid Motion. a mental health theatre company based in Basingstoke, Hampshire. It creates touring performances and delivers education and community work to increase understanding and reduce stigma around mental health.
Appetite
Touring Network Partner
Appetite is the Arts Council England-funded Creative People and Places programme for Stoke-on-Trent.
It is all about getting more people taking the lead in choosing, creating and taking part in art experiences in the places where they live. Led by New Vic Theatre, Appetite aims to get more people in the city to experience and be inspired by the arts.
Beginning in 2013, Appetite collaborates with local people and partners to a present a thrilling programme a world-class work on the streets of the city for all to enjoy.
The Arches Worcester Festivals, produced by Severn Arts
Touring Network Partner
Brand new festivals, delivered by Severn Arts, are taking place in Worcester, showcasing national and international creative talent and supporting local emerging work. Placing culture & creativity at the heart of the city.
The first of the festivals, LIGHT NIGHT WORCESTER, took place across the city centre on the evening of Thursday 16 January. There are more festivals to come, each with the same high-quality work and opportunities but completely different to each other. The festival’s programme is part of THE ARCHES – WORCESTER PROJECT.
Severn Arts is a principle partner in this project and is the lead organisation for the Festivals. Severn Arts is a leading arts charity providing education, participation and engagement programmes across Worcestershire. The organisation is ambitious for Worcester and Worcestershire: passionate about building and developing arts projects and opportunities to help raise the city and county’s profile as a vibrant, rich cultural destination.
The Arches Worcester project is supported by the Department of Culture Media and Sports’ Cultural Development Fund, administered by Arts Council England.
Have a closer look at The Arches Worcester Festival here
David Edmunds - Festivals Director, Severn Arts
Basingstoke Festival
Touring Network Partner
Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council have demonstrated an ambition by positively investing in arts and culture with the creation of a new culture team.
Basingstoke Festival will enter its 8th year in 2019 and is a 15-day summer arts festival based in the borough of Basingstoke and Deane, supported by Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council. With the theme ‘Art in Unusual Places’, it serves to showcase the very best of local arts talent alongside top UK and international artists and companies, additionally supporting and promoting a large number of ‘Festival in the Community’ events. The festival culminates with B LOVE, a two-day music and arts weekend featuring over 80 live performance acts.
For more information click here
Donna Makins - Arts Development Officer
Birmingham Hippodrome
Touring Network Partner
Birmingham Hippodrome is one of the UK’s busiest and most vibrant theatres welcoming over 500,000 visitors every year to see world-class musicals, ballet, opera, contemporary dance, comedy and pantomime. In 2019, it celebrated its 120th year.
It engages many more through its ambitious programme of festivals, community work and transformational learning projects.
See more information here
Graham Callister - Director of Festivals
Bournemouth Arts by the Sea
Touring Network Partner
The Arts by the Sea festival is Bournemouth’s annual celebration of culture, bringing an intriguing, exciting and carnivalesque mix of the arts to Bournemouth’s unique and beautiful locations.
The festival aims to increase opportunities for people to participate in the arts and enhance a sense of community while supporting talented artists creating work that makes a real impact on the audience and the town. Diverse music, art and dance, site-specific installations and large-scale spectaculars are all key to Arts by the Sea. Most events are family friendly and free to attend.
Cathryn Peach-Barnes - Creative Producer (From the Fields)
Brighton Festival
Artistic Directorate Partner
Brighton Festival, now the largest arts festival in England, is one of the major milestones in the international cultural calendar. Over a three-week period, Brighton Festival explores a wide-ranging programme of music, theatre, dance, film, and literature. It has a long tradition of attracting the most exciting performers from across the globe and promoting local artists, and bringing fresh, challenging new work to Brighton.
Cheshire Dance
Touring Network Partner
Cheshire Dance produces Now Northwich, a new outdoor international dance and street art festival each October. It runs an extensive programme of dance across Cheshire, including professional development that attracts dance artists from across the country and inclusive dance engagement deeply embedded in community, health and education networks locally. Cheshire Dance is also the accountable body and a founder member of Dance Consortia North West: a partnership of artists, organisations and HE institutions working to support artist and talent development as well as develop dance audiences in the North West.
See more information about Cheshire Dance here
Citadel Arts
Creative Development Network Partner
Citadel Arts is a new pilot family and children’s agency producing high-quality performance work across non-traditional spaces and the public realm in St Helens. Born out of the Citadel Arts Centre and adopting a more agile, resilient and sustainable delivery model, the agency is a key asset in St Helens cultural ecology.
Citadel Arts has successfully changed its operating model from a venue-led to an agency organisation engaging children and families in the public realm. We have raised the artistic creative quality of our programme while fostering new and exciting relationships with sector lead partners.
Employing collaborative methodologies and an engagement model that meets communities in their own spaces, Citadel Arts is contributing to local ambitions for the town to become an arts and cultural hub.
Citadel Arts programme has three main areas of activity:
PROGRAMMING: Professional arts experiences for children and families away from the traditional arts centre building, in community spaces such as disused shops, schools, libraries and the public realm.
COMMUNITY COMMISSIONING: Co-commissions using grass roots community arts engagement to explore issues most relevant to specific communities.
PARTICIPATION: Participation programme in community settings including weekly St Helens Youth Theatre and a participation programme in schools with Cultured: St Helens LCEP.
The Culture House
Creative Development Partner
(b) Based in Grimsby, The Culture House is committed to widening access to arts and culture in areas of least engagement. It develops and produces a full range of exciting and inspiring cultural projects, in partnership with artists, local communities and other stakeholders.
It contributes to increasing engagement and participation in culture and aims to positively impact on everyday life by presenting work in a wide range of indoor and outdoor local spaces.
Charlotte Bowen - Director & Festival producer
Historic England
Creative Development Network Partner
Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England’s spectacular historic environment, from beaches and battlefields to parks and pie shops.
We protect, champion and save the places that define who we are and where we’ve come from as a nation. We care passionately about the stories they tell, the ideas they represent and the people who live, work and play among them.
Working with communities and specialists we share our passion, knowledge and skills to inspire interest, care and conservation, so everyone can keep enjoying and looking after the history that surrounds us all.
Tamsin Silvey - Cultural Programme Curator
Dancin’ Oxford
Creative Development Network Partner
Dancin’ Oxford is the leading dance organisation in Oxfordshire making a significant contribution to the vibrant cultural ecology in the county. This has been achieved with the strong support of Arts Council England, Oxford City Council, and its Arts Development Officer. The City Council’s dance development objectives include:
– Increasing participation in dance.
– Working with those involved in dance provision to enhance the profile, quality and variety of dance activity in the city.
– Leading, initiating and fundraising for innovative dance-based projects.
– Ensuring access to support and professional development for Oxford-based professional dance artists and companies through Oxford Dance Forum.
Dancin’ Oxford is a major development for dance both locally, regionally and nationally. It significantly raises the profile and visibility of dance in the city, further establishing Oxford as a recognized hub for vibrant dance activity. It also provides opportunity for participants to actively engage in high quality dance, through an exciting programme of participatory activity and a performance programme.
Dancin’ Oxford involves successful and well co-ordinated partnership working between key organisations in the area. Festival partners are Pegasus Theatre, Oxford Playhouse, North Wall Arts Centre, The Mill Arts Centre (Banbury), Cornerstone Arts Centre (Didcot), Oxford City Council, Westgate Shopping Centre and Oxford Dance Forum.
Claire Thompson - Festival Director / Arts Development Officer
First Art
Touring Network Partner
First Art will inspire more people from Ashfield, Bolsover, Mansfield and North East Derbyshire to shape and experience great art.
First Art is the Creative People and Places programme for in this area and is supported through funding from Arts Council England.
First Art is a consortium programme led by Creswell Heritage Trust in partnership with City Arts, Junction Arts, Prince’s Trust and Ault Hucknall Environment Action Group. First Art puts people first in everything we do, providing first-hand quality experiences which allow local people to recognise the value of the arts and the role the arts can play in their own lives.
Find more information here
Greenwich + Docklands International Festival (FESTIVAL.ORG)
FESTIVAL.ORG
FESTIVAL.ORG is one of the UK’s leading outdoor arts producing organisations. Collaborating with artists and arts organisations around the world to create extraordinary productions, we commission, re-imagine, produce and showcase a growing repertory of work that brings public spaces to life and is engaging and inspiring large, diverse audiences.
FESTIVAL.ORG’s flagship event is the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF), London’s leading festival of free outdoor performing arts (theatre, dance, and street arts), an annual 10-day celebration of extraordinary outdoor events that transform people’s lives. The Festival commits to breaking new ground in outdoor performance and raising the ambition, quality, and diversity of outdoor work produced, focusing on the commissioning and developing outdoor work led by Deaf and disabled artists and artists from diverse backgrounds.
FESTIVAL.ORG also plays a distinctive, strategic role within the wider outdoor arts sector by devising and producing large-scale work (including ceremony-scale spectacle), by working with culturally diverse artists and by introducing new artists into the outdoors who might previously have worked in building-based contexts. Established as a sector leader in disability arts and access, FESTIVAL.ORG is pioneering new approaches to access and audience engagement and supports D/deaf and disabled artists to make shows for outdoor environments. We have been awarded Gold by Attitude is Everything on their Charter for Best Practice for GDIF, for demonstrating continued commitment to accessibility for D/deaf and disabled people.
Hat Fair
Artistic Directorate Partner
Hat Fair is Britain’s longest running festival of street theatre and outdoor arts – taking place in Winchester in July every year.
Now in its 38th year, Hat Fair, named after the tradition of throwing donations into performance hats, first burst onto the Winchester scene in 1974 as a busker’s festival.
It has developed a strong reputation and following, providing a weekend filled with hundreds of colourful and exciting performances.
Just So Festival
Artistic Directorate Partner
The Just So Festival is an annual weekend-long camping festival for children and their families. The festival provides a magical experience where art, music and literature entwined with a beautiful and wondrous landscape. We offer a broad range of musical, theatrical, and visual performances, workshops and installations within a safe, natural and magical setting. Every clearing and glade holds a new way to unleash creativity. Families discover and delight in the spectacular within the woodland environment during this weekend camping event.
Lancashire Encounter
Touring Network Partner
Lancashire Encounter is an ambitious, high-quality creative festival for the whole of Lancashire that builds on the regions great tradition of making and taking part. Bringing together artists, arts organisations and communities from across Lancashire, the Encounter will be a true Lancastrian celebration.
Have a closer look here
Leicester City Council
Touring Network Partner
The City Festival, held in August, celebrates Leicester in the heart of the city. Taking place over ten fun-packed days, sites across the city centre come alive with entertainment including sports, culture, music, art, heritage and more. Incorporating well-established favourites like Leicester Belgrave Mela, Journeys Festival, City Music Festival, and the Old Town Festival, plus an exciting programme of outdoor performance
Theo Crew - Senior Festivals and Events Officer
The Mouth of the Tyne Festival
Touring Network Partner
The Mouth of the Tyne Festival attracts the best local talent in a celebration of world-class street entertainment, live music and special one-off performances. To ensure a wide-ranging exciting programme, it brings in performers from around the world to offer a vibrant and diverse cultural event.
This year marks the 15th consecutive year of the festival. It brings families and generations together, allowing them to be entertained in an attractive coastal setting, with much of the entertainment being free.
Steve Bishop - Senior Manager Cultural Services
Norfolk & Norwich Festival
Artistic Directorate Partner
Norfolk & Norwich Festival is a flagship arts organisation for the East of England with a reputation for innovative, inspirational programming and commissioning. As well as staging one of the most significant arts festivals in the UK each May, Norfolk & Norwich Festival collaborates throughout the year with local, national and international partners to produce work for a huge and diverse range of audiences, participants and communities.
Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council
Touring Network Partner
Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council is the local authority of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham in Greater Manchester, England.
Have a closer look at Oldham Council’s Arts and Events programme here
Out There International Festival of Circus and Street Arts
Artistic Directorate Partner
The Out There Festival is the largest street arts and circus festival in the East of England. It is fast becoming one of the UK’s leading events, with an international reputation for presenting excellent artistic work and a rich mix of indoor and outdoor performance.
Out There Festival is programmed and organised by SeaChanage Arts, based in The Drill House in Great Yarmouth. The Drill House is available for use for artistic creation, residencies and rehearsal for indoor and outdoor street arts and circus work.
Rochdale Feel Good Festival
Touring Network Partner
Rochdale Borough Council delivers public services to over 210,000 residents in Rochdale, Heywood, Middleton and The Pennines. Link4Life, the Rochdale Boroughwide Cultural Trust, is a registered charity responsible for cultural leadership, delivery and production in Rochdale Borough.
Since 2015 we have been working together to introduce family-friendly street theatre and outdoor programming to complement the core live music presented at the annual ‘Feel Good Festival’, a free to attend, large scale event located in the town centre.
Find out more information here
Darren Grice - Deputy Chief Executive
Salisbury International Arts Festival, part of Wiltshire Creative
Artistic Directorate Partner
Salisbury International Arts Festival is part of Wiltshire Creative, a new pan-arts organisation that brings together the energy and ambition of Salisbury Arts Centre, Salisbury International Arts Festival and Salisbury Playhouse. It is an ambitious and innovative joint arts offer that secures a bright future for audiences, artists and participants.
Wiltshire Creative is rooted in, and draws inspiration from, the city of Salisbury and works beyond its boundaries and draws audiences from across the county and further afield. The creation of new work is at the heart of its programme, as it builds new relationships with audiences, artists and participants.
Have a closer look here
SO Festival
Touring Network Partner
SO Festival is an international street art festival offering a variety of outdoor entertainment and takes place in Mablethorpe and Skegness in Lincolnshire, UK.
The Festivals mission is to work with deprived communities to make small and positive changes happen that have a big effect on people’s lives. We will do this by engaging those communities in East Lindsey facing societies biggest issues; poor physical and/ or mental health, unemployment, poor educational attainment, financial hardship and isolation. We will use ambitious and exciting collaborative culture projects as a tool to help our communities overcome their barriers to a better life.
The festival is managed by Magna Vitae, working with Artistic Director, Jens Frimann Hansen and is supported by Arts Council England – as a National Portfolio Organisation – and East Lindsey District Council.
Stockton International Riverside Festival
Artistic Directorate Partner
Stockton International Riverside Festival (SIRF) is an annual free outdoor arts and street theatre festival in Stockton-on-Tees. In 2017 the festival celebrated its 30th year, helping to cement its position as one of the world’s oldest and best international outdoor art festivals.
Taking place over in early August, it attracts international artists performing to thousands of spectators each year. It showcases outstanding international street theatre, dance, circus and music acts with a packed programme of shows for all the family.
SIRF is supported by Arts Council England and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council.
Theatre Orchard
Touring Network Partner
Theatre Orchard is a professional arts development charity and North Somerset’s first Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. For the past 12 years, we have partnered with outstanding artists and organisations to create transformative experiences for people and places in North Somerset.
We foreground creativity as the catalyst for cultural, community and economic regeneration; building the skills and confidence of people living in some of England’s most deprived areas, such as Weston-Super-Mare’s South Ward.
Find out more information here
Vision Redbridge Culture & Leisure
Touring Network Partner
Vision Redbridge Culture & Leisure (VRCL) is a charitable trust delivering and developing library, cultural, sport and leisure facilities and services on behalf of the London borough of Redbridge. The Culture Team in Vision aims to support, promote, develop and deliver the arts and cultural offer across the borough through animating public spaces, enabling and encouraging engagement in culture and supporting and promoting the voluntary arts sector.
Ken Aston Square and Ilford Town Centre Outdoor Arts Programme is an exciting, engaging and accessible series of high-quality performances in the heart of the community. The programme runs from June to September and is completely free for residents and visitors of all ages to enjoy and take part in.
Find out more about Redbridge Outdoor Arts here
Sam Goodey - Culture Team Leader
Wakefield Council
Touring Network Partner
Wakefield Council has long recognised the benefits of investing in cultural and creative provision. Evidence shows that creativity and culture have the power to drive physical and social regeneration; build individual and community confidence, support learning and skills; promote inclusion and diversity, and support our mental and physical wellbeing. Perhaps above all, opportunities to be creative and enjoy cultural experiences are a fundamental source of enjoyment for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities; undoubtedly helping people and places to thrive.
WE Great Place
Touring Network Partner
Great Place Wentworth & Elsecar is a project funded by Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and Arts Council England (ACE), our work focuses on the rich heritage, culture and community engagement within these truly great places.
Over three years the WE Great Place team will deliver an exciting range of cultural activity, inspired by the vivid history linked to the fascinating Wentworth Woodhouse and Earl Fitzwilliam’s industrial empire at Elsecar. Our vision is to raise the aspirations of young people in the local area and help them achieve their potential using new, innovative methods of engagement.
Great Place is led by Barnsley Council, representing a close partnership with Rotherham Council and Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust.great
See more information here
Past Partners
Bell Square
www.bellsquarelondon.com
Bradford Festival
www.bradfordfestival.org.uk
Bristol Do
Derby Festé
www.derbyfeste.com
Fuse Festival
LeftCoast
www.leftcoast.org.uk
Mintfest
www.streetsahead.org.uk
Moon Festival
www.moonfestival.com
Lakes Alive
www.lakesalive.co.uk
Right up Our Street
www.rightupourstreet.org.uk
Showzam!
www.leftcoast.org.uk/projects/showstoppers/showzam/
Vivacity, Peterborough
vivacity.org
XTRAX
xtrax.org.uk
Yorkshire Festival
festival.yorkshire.com