A Festival full of new talent - RISE
Our RISE programme is at the heart of the Festival this year, with a dedicated RISE stage showcasing incredible emerging talent, dedicated art gallery spaces for phenomenal up-and-coming visual artists and work experience opportunities alongside the best sound and lighting companies in the business. We have received the most wonderful support from our audience enabling us to double the amount of paid RISE opportunities for future talent looking to break into the, notoriously difficult, arts industry. We have worked with national, well respected production colleges, Future Hits radio, been to open mic nights, searched music platforms and socials, and visited art fairs up and down the country, to find the very best young, emerging performers, visual artists and backstage crew to form this year’s RISE programme.
New for 2023, we are building a dedicated RISE stage which will host two performers each evening showcasing a wide variety of genres from Latin and Balkan Jazz to Soul, R&B and modern country pop. The stage will be located in the heart of the site, perfect for an early evening drink in the sun whilst listening to our early programmed RISE talent then, post fireworks show, our late night RISE musicians will perform high-energy, up-beat sounds before you head to your next evening venue. We encourage every one of you to stop by the RISE stage and give these hugely talented, up-and-coming performers a moment of your time, you never know, in a few years time they could be on our floating stage and you saw them here first!
Following on from the success of last year, where our RISE visual artist, Lizzie Wheeler, was picked up by a high-end London gallery as a result of exhibiting at Henley Festival, we are offering a gallery space to our RISE visual artist to feature in the Ruby Gallery. This year’s RISE artist is Morag Caister, a fabulous figurative portrait painter and also Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year. Alongside Morag in the HI-RISE gallery you’ll be able to see more exciting artworks from up-and-coming RISE artists Keren Golea, Sara Hoque and Sam Smyth. We are working with our major sponsors on some very exciting projects, including an unique installation designed by one of our RISE visual artists. We’ll be following this journey and sharing more on the project soon.
As well as offering performance and exhibiting opportunities, we also want to nurture the backstage crew of the future. Last year, Sheridan Burns joined the sound team at Henley Festival, and has since worked on a number of projects with them and been offered a full time role once she finishes studying. This year we have been able to increase the amount of paid backstage work experience opportunities at Henley Festival. Our sound, lighting, marketing and production teams are all keen to encourage future talent and RISE backstage crew will be working in all these areas. This hands-on experience at a live venue is invaluable for them to put all they have learnt during their studies into practice. Sheridan, last year, said ‘although the hours were long in the heat, the hands on experience was so worth it’.
It is because of your ticket purchases that we are able to offer these amazing opportunities to emerging talent both on and off the stage. So, thank you! Come and enjoy helping us to support the next generation of talent at Henley Festival.