NNF10: Thank You!

With a mug of tea in one hand, wiping my brow with the other, I sit at my computer agog at the flurry of brilliance that has passed my eyes over the past fortnight. I have seen middle-aged men causing pandemonium using streams of paper and leaf blowers, and a lady performing acrobats inside a chandelier. I have seen a man playing a ukulele standing on a fellow man’s back, and the front and back of a van welded together on a golf buggy chassis, blurting out music. I have seen an enormous Red Ball jammed between my hairdresser and a city church, and I have seen ice cream vans dreamily calling and responding to each other around different Norwich neighbourhoods.



The past fortnight has been an eclectic frenzy of excitement, expertise and eccentricity. This year’s performers at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival have delighted and stunned their various audiences, bringing colour, verve and, significantly, the attention of the nation to the fine city. This year, no single act or performer stands out amongst the others – not even John Cale. The strength of this Festival was in the collective participation and the array of glittering acts that graced the Festival Gardens and Norwich’s other familiar stages.



I chatted to a man a few weeks ago who bemoaned the Festival, claiming that it was too ‘exclusive’ and had ‘ideas above its station’. I couldn’t disagree any more fervently. Ideas above its station, indeed. I repeat: I have seen middle-aged men causing pandemonium using streams of paper and leaf blowers at this Festival, and that was on the very first day. What could be more accessible? The world premiere of Dan Jones’ ‘Music for Seven Ice Cream Vans’ was held nowhere other than around the neighbourhood of Mile Cross, bringing smiling children, parents and elderly couples to their living room windows and front gardens in droves. No, no, sir, you’re right, how terribly exclusive…



At a Festival so well timed to coincide with Norwich’s bid for City of Culture 2013, it was tremendous and heartening to have been both amongst the audience and, as a photographer, at the forefront of so many vibrant performances. The events of the last two weeks will surely have helped the city’s bid – but more importantly, whether it was for fifteen minutes of dreamy music floating around people’s back gardens, or for night after night of fabulous enjoyment, the Festival brought beaming smiles to thousands of people.



Right-o. Time to look ahead. 6th – 21st May 2011 – I don’t know about you, but I can't wait to feel this exhaustion all over again...