Rivermeet Arts and Heritage Festival promises to be a day of folly and imagination where Giants will roam Christchurch and myths are bought to life. Follow the crocodile footsteps to jump into our fantastical past... Through the Paradise Gardens, past the looming Castle, around to the Norman House with a stage in for the very first time, hosting incredible musicians and performers; then along the Mill Stream where you’ll pass sights of wonderment and down to the Quomps for revelry around the Bandstand!

Music, theatre, dance and nonsense are the order of the day. Find award winning musicians including BBC Radio 2’s Folk Singer of the Year Chris Wood at the Norman House and puppet shows by the Mausoleum. Help create a new play with Treehouse theatre in the gardens and follow a real life Giant down the river. Race Crocodiles in the stream then jig the night away on the quay.

Bring a picnic, pull up a rug (or a brolly if the weather turns!) sit back, and enjoy...

Riversmeet Arts and Heritage Festival is being organised by New Art Spaces in partnership with The Arts Institute at Bournemouth, The Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage, The Red House Museum and Christchurch Borough Council. New Arts Spaces is Julie Higgins, Stephanie Carswell and Miles Berry, all students on Arts and Event Management at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth. 

Riversmeet Arts and Heritage Festival is our final year major project. Working with local groups and organisations we have put together a day never before seen in Christchurch. 

Leading up to and alongside the festival, with the support of HLF and the Red House Museum, we have been running a new oral history project. We have been meeting up with locals and letting them share their memories of Christchurch for all to hear. These vivid memories of circuses and escaped crocodiles, can-can dancers and the sea have helped build the programme for the festival. On the day you’ll find stories of local myths and legends; hear songs of the sea and smuggling and see local folklore bough to life. 

Local schools and youth groups have been working with educational leaders to bring the memories to the festival. Come and see Mudeford Infant’s dance based on the escaped crocodile;  find circuses on the Quomps again; cower at tales of women buried alive; marvel at the can-can girls and make a crocodile to join in the race on the stream!

After the festival, Riversmeet will be doing even more… We are commissioning local artist Daniel Byrne to create a new map for the town with all the amazing aspects of Christchurch on which will be available from the Information Centre, Council, Library and more. We will be putting the oral histories onto a CD available locally and online (a great tool for school history projects!) and there will be a new addition to the Red House Museum in the form of a Jukebox designed to hold all the memories that the team there have collected and the new ones from Riversmeet.