Festival of The Sea 2023

Fishing has been at the heart of Grimsby’s community for millenia. Festival Of The Sea returns to celebrate our historic fishing industry that fed the nation and put Lincolnshire on the map.

With a community-led programme of live music, arts and crafts, interactive theatre and hands-on workshops, this one-day free event promises to showcase more local talent and skills than ever before.

The festival’s mission is to celebrate Grimsby’s rich fishing, seafood history and culture while also looking at a more sustainable future ahead, and to bring together the community for a day of fun, entertainment and interactive learning. 

Come join us for the festival’s third year running on Saturday 15 July 2023. To learn more about the Festival of the Sea, visit our website www.festivaloftheseagrimsby.co.uk

Thanks to additional funding from Arts Council England, Festival of the Sea will kick off before the main event with Umbrella Events that will take place prior to the festival day in July. For those seeking hands-on experience prior to the festival day, we will offer different arts and crafts workshops, providing an opportunity to unleash your creativity and bring out your inner artist.

One of these pre-engagement experiences on offer are sustainable workshops with Eleos Collective on Wednesday 5th July – created in response to the question ‘What if we cared about the sea’, the audience will explore the environmental impact our actions have on the health of the sea.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to participate in the creation of captivating yarn bombs, involving knitters and crochet groups in the community, which will then be proudly displayed throughout the festival grounds on the event day. Dates and bookings via the Grimsby yarn bombs on Facebook.

If you prefer knotting to knitting, then you’re invited to come and learn the basics of Macrame led by talented local Gemma from “It Started with a Stitch”. Taking place at their new space at Grimsby Docks, you will be led to create a wall hanging using natural unbleached macrame cotton, echoing the fishing nets that would have been made across Grimsby back in the day.

On Saturday, 15th July, the bandstand outside the Fishing Heritage Centre will come alive with live music acts, featuring Wild Berry Mix, East Marsh Peace choir, dancing performances by Grimsby Institute and Sole Rebel tap; a Family Game Show by Mermaid Twinkle. The day will be hosted by Grimsby resident and stand up comedian Lauren Smith.

And if you’re feeling peckish, head over to the Theatre Cookery tent, a new introduction for this year’s festival. The debut bespoke production by Kazbath Theatre, a new theatre company led by Andrew Evans, Founder & Co-Director of Breakwater Theatre in Cleethorpes. Their first ever public showing of “Cap’n Fishcake and his Fabulous Fish Fingers” is a live puppet and comedy show featuring grizzled seaman Cap’n Fishcake and his three puppet fish fingers The Omega 3.

There will be cooking workshops offered by Cook by name, cook by nature; “Fish Finger Theatre”, a high-energy, interactive theatre piece combined with a cooking and tasting experience and live music, by Matt and Lisa of Lowercase Theatre and Ruchita Green, Masala Masters. The Theatre Cookery Tent will be open all day for you to see theatre shows but you’ll be able to get stuck in making your own food through the workshops! It’s all free, and it’s all for the locals.

Outside the Fishing Heritage Centre, there will be free drop-in craft workshops delivered by Grimsby based Our Big Picture, taking inspiration from the IWM Legacy Fund commission exhibition “Friends, Foes and Good Companions” . These sessions will get you engaged in hands-on activities on Grimsby historical moments, including finding out how the fish gets to your plate.

Freestyle Academy CIC will bring free music technology workshops, providing 8-16 year olds the opportunity to get creative by creating their very own Sea Soundscape!

Alexandra Dock waterfront will host the return of the Canoe River Cleaner nature walk and Coritani Creative, with their exciting Taiko performance Grimsby based piece, “Follow The Fishing”, which was written by over 1000 local people in 2014 and has been taught all over the world. The engaging performances will be followed with drumming workshops throughout the day.

To top it all off, the Original Emporium Makers Market and many more independent makers will be part of the market area, selling locally sourced sea glass jewellery and gifts to framed images of 1980’s Grimsby Docks; all products are inspired by local heritage and their surroundings.

The festival’s mission is to celebrate Grimsby’s rich fishing, seafood history and culture while also looking at a more sustainable future ahead, and to bring together the community for a day of fun, entertainment and interactive learning. It also aims to promote local businesses and encourage tourism to the area, while also being a flagship event for what’s going on in Grimsby throughout the year. To reinforce this, there will be a “roadshow area” for local non profit organisations, where they’ll engage directly with the local community and talk through their services.

There will be a couple of special events taking place in different locations:

‘Creating the Spectacle!’ by Sue Austin taking place at Our Big Picture.

A trilogy of special intimate screening, which are single-screen versions of a series of 360 degree videos developed as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Austin can be seen in a specially designed self-propelled underwater wheelchair wearing a summer dress and flying along mid water, negotiating banks of coral and shoals of fish.

The Port

A 30-minute immersive theatre experience in the intimate cold stores at the Turntable Gallery on the Docks which will be live streamed from the Turntable Gallery shop window on Victoria Street, Grimsby.

Some of these activities may require pre-booking to ensure an optimal experience, so be sure to visit the festival’s website to check.