A VIBRANT new arts festival celebrating the Tamar Valley and its rivers is on its way next year.

The arts festival will run over four days held at four different locations along the three rivers of the Tamar, Tavy and Lynher.

The four-day event will see both sides of the river come alive with art installations, workshops, live music, performance art and more.

The event is being organised by the Tamara Landscape Partnership team.

Bryony James, Community & Volunteer Officer for Tamara Landscape Partnership spoke of the team’s vision for the festival.

‘The project is to celebrate Tamara and getting local communities involved and interested.

‘It’s going to be a lovely celebration of the area, culture, heritage and make it come alive for the local people.

‘It should be a lovely showcase of the local area and what the Tamar Valley has to offer.

‘We want to promote the natural resource that’s here and put East Cornwall on the map, encouraging people to come here.’

The event will not only be jam-packed with art activity, but will also celebrate local produce and local growers, community groups and there will be competitions and involvement with local schools.

‘In the run up to the festival, we’ll have a months worth of activities building up’, said Bryony.

‘We’re hoping to be working with the Thames Festival Trust, River of Hope; an arts-based learning project linking schools around the world through the study of rivers.’

‘We will also bring in high profile artists to work with the children.’

The team began working on the festival project last year and worked with Creative Kernow who ran multiple consultations with local people about what they would like the festival to look like.

Bryony said: ‘We’ve done consultations and we’ve got ideas from those. Currently, we are checking the feasibility of these ideas and we’re trying to make some of them a reality.’

The festival idea remains in its planning stages and the team is waiting to hear about an application for Arts Council funding, but the festival is planned to be held in October half term 2024 and then will be a bi-annually event after that.

‘People are really excited’, explained Bryony. ‘Loads of local people want to get involved. ‘It’s going to be a lovely opportunity for partnership between Devon and Cornwall and to celebrate differences between communities.

‘Everybody is looking forward to it and we are excited about the possibilities and collaborations.

‘We’re hoping there will be a bit of a buzz.’

For more information about the Tamara Landscape Partnership visit: https://tamaralandscapepartnership.org.uk/.