The popular Yorkshire arts festival is returning to Wakefield. The Long Division Festival is its largest festival of music and culture and is returning after a year’s hiatus, with a really exciting programme. From 1st to 3rd June, the festival, which intends to place West Yorkshire on to the country’s cultural map, will host events across over twenty venues in Wakefield, with 90% of them free to attend.
The festival with a varied programme, will welcome a line-up of artists and the free events are part of a commitment to make arts more accessible to all by Long Division, plus to provide more support to West Yorkshire artists. Dean Freeman, festival organiser, explains that making the festival accessible to more people is important as arts and culture play a huge part in the happiness of a community and us as a society. By the support from Wakefield Businesses Improvement District, 90% of the festival is free to attend and thus it opens up to new audiences, who may have seen it as outside their world, or may have a financial barrier, he added.
The arts and culture programme is named as ‘A Manifesto for a New Wakefield’ and includes some unique events. A panel on the creative writing process, ‘Write Place, Write Time’, has special guests Laura Snape and Billy Bragg. ‘Visible Words from Invisible People’ is a project by artist Richard Wheater, working with the city’s homeless community to create a visual language of neon signs. Leading the line-up this year is The Membranes, the post-punk legends, joined by a full choir, The Surfing Magazines, Fizzy Blood, ZoZo and others. The festive 3 days have plenty of free events and entertainment to cater to great variety of people and tastes.
