New two-day arts event the EA Festival, taking place in north Essex this weekend, will include music, poetry, media, books... and giant sculptures.
A large-scale sculpture installation of 10 works by leading regional artists, including 8ft-plus creations by Laurence Edwards and Maurice Blik, will kick off the weekend at Hedingham Castle, near Halstead.
The festival will run from Saturday, July 31 to Sunday, August 1. It will include appearances by top musicians Dame Evelyn Glennie and Rosey Chan, Countdown wordsmith Susie Dent, film director Mike Figgis, comedy producer John Lloyd and many more well-known names.
The curator and producer of the installation, Adam Robinson, will lead a free, unticketed sculpture walk at 1.30 pm on Sunday.
As well as taking place in "real life", the festival will be livestreamed in real time. Its founder, artistic director Joanne Ooi, wanted to create a cultural event that could go on regardless of the Covid situation, and designed it to be as flexible as possible.
Joanne described it as a first for any festival in East Anglia and one of the first such instances in the UK, courtesy of a purpose-built superfast internet connection supplied by County Broadband, the festival's infrastructure partner.
Complimentary access to the real-time livestream will be available to all those buying tickets for the festival before 8 pm on Thursday, July 29. Virtual passes can also be bought separately.
For full details on the EA Festival, visit the event's website.
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