Tickets now on sale for events including those with Hilary Benn and Marina Warner
Nicki Chapman
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May 13, 2023
Tickets are now on sales for events taking place during the 57th Bedford Park Festival which officially kicks off on Saturday 10 June.
This year the opening at the Green Days weekend will be performed by Chiswick resident and broadcaster Nicki Chapman at 11am on Acton Green. As well as being a regular presenter on BBC Radio 2 she is the host of Escape To The Country as well as being a key member of the team covering The RHS Chelsea Flower Show since 2006.
Once she has got the festival started, Nicki will then judge the children’s fancy dress competition - this year on the theme of ‘Chiswick’.
The two-day Green Days Fete & Craft Fair is the opening weekend ( 10 and 11 June) of the Bedford Park Festival, ‘Chiswick’s Favourite Fortnight’, the annual arts and community Festival organised by St Michael & All Angels Church, Bedford Park.
The crowds at Green Days in 2022
Other Festival highlights will include an interview with the Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, former Shadow Foreign Secretary, a distinguished elder statesman of the Labour Party and, like Nicki, a longstanding Chiswick resident.
There’ll also be a Poetry Evening celebration of Chiswick’s Nobel Prize-winning poet WB Yeats, with guest speaker Marina Warner, whose son Conrad Shawcross RA created the Enwrought Light sculpture in memory of Yeats.
Arts and social events include a screening of the musical comedy film Very Annie Mary, starring Jonathan Pryce, Ruth Madoc and Joanna Page; a wine tasting with international wine judge, writer and broadcaster David Kermode (‘Mr Vinosaurus’) of ITV’s This Morning; and an Edinburgh Festival Preview - Alison Skilbeck’s Uncommon Ground, a play about six wildly different people.
On the musical side, international film organist Roger Sayer will give a recital on the organ in St Michael & All Angels Church ahead of his Hans Zimmer Live Tour performance at the O2. Festival regular David Juritz, violin, will lead a Baroque concert - Towards the Goldberg Variations - with equally celebrated musicians Craig Ogden, guitar, and Adrian Bradbury, cello. Another festival fixture, soprano Milly Forrest, will present an early evening concert aimed at families, featuring highlights from The Marriage of Figaro with soloists from the Royal Opera House and English National Opera.
Cchildren and their parents will also enjoy Maximus the Mouse, the illustrated follow-up book to Frederick the Fox by Chiswick’s Lisa Read and her sister, author Kim Ansell, who will be presenting an interactive book reading and colouring activity.
The Festival begins on Friday 9 June with a lunchtime organ recital by Roger Sayer. He was the organ soloist for Zimmer's Oscar-nominated score for the motion picture Interstellar and went on to perform the work live with the composer at the Royal Albert Hall, attended by
Christopher Nolan, Jessica Chastain, Professor Brian Cox and Professor Stephen Hawking.
On Friday evening, at 6.45pm in the church, it’s the preview party for the annual Bedford Park Summer Exhibition and Bedford Park Photographic Exhibition, which run throughout Green Days weekend in the church and parish hall. Local artists and photographers can now
enter their works for both exhibitions via the Festival website www.bedfordparkfestival.org.
Among other highlights, there will be a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Bedford Park Open Gardens (1983-2023), the 50th anniversary of Artists at Home (1973-2023) and the Centenary of WB Yeats' Nobel Prize for Literature (1923-2023).
From the opening party to the Festival Mass and Bedford Park Open Gardens on the final Sunday 25 June, there is an array of concerts, talks, walks and drama, with something for everyone, whatever their age or taste, in aid of charities and the church.
Profits will support St Michael & All Angels Church, which runs the festival for the community, and its three 2023 charities: The Upper Room, helping the needy in Shepherd’s Bush; Swinfen Telemedicine, which links specialist medical expertise to doctors and nurses
in remote regions of the world; and Crosslight Chiswick, its newest charity, which provides face-to-face debt advice, together with money education and budgeting support to individuals and families in need.
Read the full Festival programme and book tickets at www.bedfordparkfestival.org.
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