Hoxton Street Party launches Shoreditch Festival tomorrow, with circus acts, street dance and beer festival

Emma Bartholomew, Senior Reporter Friday, July 13, 2012
11:32 AM

The 11th annual Shoreditch Festival kicks off tomorrow with a street party in Hoxton with circus acts, street dance and a beer festival.

Running from July 14 to 22, Shoreditch Trust’s programme sees performance, entertainment and exploration along the Regent’s Canal and across Shoreditch.

From 10am on Saturday, Hoxton Street will be filled with activities and performances including street dance, circus acts, tea dances, theatre shows, craft areas, mask-making and drumming workshops, live music and the Hoxton Street Beer Festival with specially brewed Shoreditch Festival Cask Ale.

The Ministry of Stories literacy charity will be welcoming visitors to its newly created Children’s Republic of Shoreditch.

Then on Sunday July 15 the Shoreditch Bark Show will see pooches on parade in Shoreditch Park, being judged from 2pm.

Next weekend the festival will be one of many across the borough welcoming the Olympic Flame, and will run on Saturday July 21 and Sunday July 22 from noon to 10pm from Dunstan Road in Haggerston up to Whitmore Bridge in Hoxton.

On 21 July the Shoreditch Festival will welcome the One Hackney Festival Parade from 11am on Whitmore Road and the 2012 Torch at 4pm on Kingsland Road.

Across the site there will be The Urban Playground rooftop parkour, theatre in Bathing Booths, boat trips to the Waterhouse restaurant, the East London food market, and a vintage picnic.

Live acts will include Peruvian Cumbia, Los Chinches, Afro-Cuban band Wara, indie folk stars Urusen, the East London Creative Jazz Orchestra, master Kora player and his eight-piece band Jallykebba Susso and Manding Sabu, reggae-punk from The Great Malarkey, and South African indie-pop from Hot Water.

The nine-day extravaganza is put on by the Shoreditch Trust, a charity which aims to tackle inequality and exclusion across Hackney.