WELL, I’ll start of by saying booooooo!!! and whining that the highlight of my day (Birmingham Royal Ballet on the Centenary Square stage) got cancelled at the last minute due to an epic downpour for a full 30mins directly before they were due to go on. Water got onto and under the stage and health and safety prevented them from performing.

Boooooooooooooo!!

Oh well, luckily I was enjoyng a meal in Pizza Express during the downpour so at least didn’t get drenched myself, and I had a good day overall anyway. Here are my photos and video footage from parts of the Artsfest event

Below is the art of Alce Harfield, which I was impressed by – it was very bold and colourful. I didn’t know for sure if it was the artist herself that I was boring by wittering on about loving beach huts and how I’d love a beach hut holiday one day (she had some beach hut paintings). Only now I look at her website do I see that it was definitely Alce

Spotted this in the same marquee that Alce was showcasing her artwork and loved it, but completely forgot to note who the artist was. Tut.

These below are photos from my favourite artist’s stall of the day. Birmingham based artist Ruth Green

In this photo above you can also see she was selling some items from ‘Girls Who Draw‘, which is a Birmingham art collective that I only learned of a few weeks ago coincidentally. Ruth is part of the Girls Who Draw team and I was really pleased to see Girls Who Draw represented at the Artsfest because they are a HIGHLY talented group.

Now onto the video footage! Artfest includes music and there were plenty of musical acts playing at various locations throughout the day … indoors and out. This band below was playing next to the water fountain in front of the library, they were really good! It was nice and sunny at this time, well before the 6pm deluge of rain that prevented the Birmingham Royal Ballet from performing.

At the end of their act we sang happy birthday to her 5yr old son Bizarrely called Vidal, which is my brothers name, bizarre because it’s an uncommon name.

Some time after watching this band we were standing watching some pretty boring band on the main stage in Centenary Square when I heard this lady’s voice drifting from across the road and decided that she sounded more interesting. So we went to watch (and record) her instead.

Then we met a friend and had a lovely meal in Pizza Express and afterwards (feeling smug that the rain had stopped) went to watch the ballet …. and this is where my ballet footage should go, as my tour de force, but never mind, I’m NOT BITTER AT ALL.

Actually, I thankfully have tickets for my children and I to watch them perform The Nutcracker in December, so phew …