Holloway Arts Festival

Holloway Arts Festival is produced by Rowan Arts and was established in 2003.

Rowan Arts' mission is to bring the arts into everyday life through an artistic programme that creates connections between diverse individuals, organisations, communities and art forms. Click here to go to Rowan Arts' main website.

Holloway Arts Festival has gone from strength to strength, attracting a wide range of performers and artists and a growing audience year-on-year. For information and photos of previous years' festivals see the Past Festivals page.

Here are a few words on Holloway Arts Festival 2009 from one of our Trustees:

The seventh edition of the Holloway Arts Festival has just come to an end. In total over 8,000 people have taken part in this year's festival making it a huge success. The packed 10-day programme featured over 40 events, which showcased the work of local artists and film makers and brought national and international performers to the area, as well as giving people a chance to try out arts activities in workshops. As one local mum said to me, “There really is something for everyone this year”. Not only have there been some great new events like the Stand Up Comedy for Children with Paul Lyalls and Simon Munnery and Archway Open House (artists exhibited their work in venues around Holloway and Archway) but also plenty of the familiar, popular activities like the Arts and Crafts stalls in the Arts Zone on the Big Day Out in Whittington Park and our own film festival, Reel Islington Screenings.

This year even more Islington venues were involved, like the Archway Methodist Hall, Blackwells Book Shop, Manor Gardens Centre and the Union Chapel. It was fantastic to have such prestigious artists and writers in events on our doorstep: artist Rachel Whiteread, winner of the Turner Prize, and novelist Marina Lewycka, best-selling author of "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian", were part of the Connecting Conversations events at Archway Methodist Hall; Simon Chinn, producer of the Oscar-winning documentary "Man On Wire", did a post film Q&A at the Holloway Odeon as part of Reel Islington Screenings; and one of Britain’s best loved performance poets and Festival patron, John Hegley, entertained families with his mandolin and double bass playing, and tap dancing singer friends, at North Library.

The festival is a wonderful mixture of the quirky and high quality arts experiences. On a pouring Saturday night I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing Mark Swartzentruber, a top-class concert pianist playing in a marquee in the pouring rain in Landseer Gardens. You’d usually have to go to somewhere like the Wigmore Hall to hear someone of his calibre. I also experienced that ever-rarer feeling of community when I participated in The Big Sing, a packed singing workshop led by singing teacher extraordinaire, Angela Reith, at Emmanuel Church on Hornsey Road.

Many of the events during the festival were free, particularly on the Big Day Out in Whittington Park - which just goes to show that Rowan Arts, the Holloway-based charity which produces the Holloway Arts Festival, really does believe that the arts are for everyone, and in John Hegley’s words ‘anyone can do something artsy’.

On behalf of Rowan Arts, a big thank you to all our funders, partners, venues, volunteers and especially all participants for all their support and for helping make the Holloway Arts Festival such a great success. Roll on 2010 for the next one!

Loan Tran, Trustee, Rowan Arts