PALAVER! FESTIVAL

PALAVER! is a pioneering new development programme supporting the creation of new queer-positive performance work for children and family audiences.

Check out the trailer!
 

With brand new performances from some of the UK’s leading drag, cabaret, and performance artists, fabulous discos, and creative workshops there’s something under the rainbow for mums, dads, boys, girls, and everyone in between.

In each PALALVER KIDS PARTY we’ll be joined by a spectacular line-up of performers and artists celebrating self-expression, difference and all the things that make us unique (with a big dose of glitter thrown in for good measure).

Get ready for music, performances, DIY costume-making, party games, sing-a-longs, glitter, and of course a rainbow disco for all the family.

 

As the first programme of its kind in the world, PALAVER! brings together three strands of activity.

 
 
  • Artists delivering a series of three facilitated artist-development labs at Cambridge exploring the radical potential of queer work for young audiences through up-skilling and empowering 5 of the UK’s leading queer artists to start developing new performance work. Labs included producer support, production and development resources, and test performance opportunities. Each lab will be followed by additional development time, culminating in the creation of 5 performance extracts ready for development into full-scale productions.

  • Audiences offering a public programme of queer postive children & family performance work at Cambridge Junction, building an audience development model for queer-positive family programming.Audiences can join us at three Sunday morning PALAVER parties, bringing together disco, drag, dress-up, games, and scratch performances of work created on development labs suitable for children aged 3-8 (and their grown-ups too) on 12th September, 3rd and 17th October.The project will culminate in the PALAVER! Festival on Thursday 28th October (during half-term), a day long celebration of inclusive programming celebrating the potential of queer positive performance work for children and family audiences – including a showcase of the six new performance works developed over the project.

  • Sector advancing what it means to make intersectional queer-positive performance work for children and what it means for arts organisations to make meaningful space for queer families.On Weds 27th October we invite producers, programmers, artists directors, venue managers, artists and independent creatives to join us for the PALAVER Symposium – a day long event of interactive workshops, panel discussions, LGBTQ+ awareness training, and open conversations on artist development, emotional labour, marketing, and venue accessibility.

 

PALAVER is supported by Cambridge Junction through their Vision Mixers programme, Marlborough Productions, and Arts Council England.