This year I had the amazing opportunity to attend Latitude Festival and even better, perform there alongside other Leeds Beckett students in collaboration with SBC Theatre Company. Latitude’s theme this year was ‘Utopia’ so for two weeks we pooled together our ideas about an ideal future and transformed these hopes and wishes into poetry, acting, song, dance and pretty much everything in between to create our show, ‘Manifesto Move!’.

As a collective of music, dance and performance students these ideas were colourful and freeing but also quite heartbreaking. From tackling the double standards forced upon women, the unfairness of the class system, saving our NHS and trying to somehow make sense of current political turmoil, discussing our version of Utopia only
highlighted everything we thought was flawed in today’s society. Inevitably, this made for quite an emotional show that I don’t think any of us were expecting but we managed to end the show on a hopeful note with lots of praise from audience members.

In between shows, we had the full day to enjoy the rest of the festival. Aside from the in-tent entertainment, I also found myself getting my Tarot cards read, swimming in the lake to cool off from the 30-degree heat and making our own snacks at MakeryOnTheMove. Not just your average music festival!

I was also particularly excited to see Wolf Alice and Fickle Friends and I wasn’t disappointed. Both bands possessed a powerful stage presence, to the total attention of the audience and had an energy that made them sound even better live than on their albums. We all, of course, headed to the main stage each night to watch the headliners, Solange, The Killers and Alt-J, all of which radiated pure talent in their own right.

The 4-day festival was the epitome of inspiration; as well as working with empowering, intelligent women, there was a huge variety of entertainment. From comedy acts to cabaret, world-famous stars to independent theatre companies, talent was oozing from every tent and stall in sight. Being surrounded by so many different yet equally as
talented acts was nothing but motivating and was a clear indication that theatre, in all its forms, is still very much thriving