Journeys Festival International 2026:
Connecting Communities, One Story at a Time
Journeys Festival International returns to Leicester from 17–25 October 2026, bringing nine days of art, live performances, interactive installations and shared experiences to venues and public spaces across the city centre.
Never has there been a greater time for communities to come together and celebrate the power of creativity to connect us. In 2026 we’re surrounded by a stream of online content competing for our attention and encouraging us to react. Complex human experiences reduced to click-bait headlines and rage-inducing comments before we’ve had the opportunity to hear the stories behind them.
Journeys Festival International offers a different kind of encounter. We believe there is value in slowing down, looking beyond the headlines and meeting the people behind the stories. By hearing directly from those with lived experience, audiences can explore perspectives beyond their own and make space for curiosity and understanding.
Paul Steele, Creative Director at Art Reach, says: “We don’t expect art to have all the answers, but we do believe it can create opportunities to see the world from a different perspective. If people leave feeling a little more connected, a little more curious, or with a new understanding of someone else’s experience, then we’ve achieved what we set out to do.”
This year’s theme of community builds on what Journeys Festival International has always stood for: championing Global Majority artists, platforming the voices of people with refugee and asylum-seeking experience, and celebrating the diverse cultures, identities and journeys that shape our communities.
Festival Highlights
This year’s programme brings these ideas to life across Leicester, with artists and communities coming together to share their own stories and experiences through art. From intimate encounters to large-scale installations, the festival creates opportunities to listen, connect and see the world from a different perspective.
Pigeon Tower by Peyvand Sadeghian, a multi-sensory art installation at LCB Depot’s gallery, invites audiences to listen to recordings created with Leicester community groups, including Femina and the Red Cross. Inspired by the centuries-old Kabootar-Khaneh (pigeon towers) of Isfahan, Iran, the installation explores the sounds, memories and fragments of home that people carry with them. Peyvand said of her piece: “When I asked communities in Leicester what sounds they carry as a piece of home, the same themes came up whether from Connecticut or Kandahar: a river they grew up beside, a wind you’re sure only blows in one place and sounds like no other, TV theme tunes and radio jingles, native tongues their children repeat back slightly differently. The tower replays those fragments the way memory does, looping, layering and drifting into something still recognisable but no longer ordinary.”
At Leicester Cathedral, The Balloon Garden by Maureen Uzoh will grow throughout the festival as audiences contribute anonymous messages that will be attached to balloon sculptures floating above a vibrant garden created with local community groups. Together, these contributions will form a collective portrait of Leicester and the people who call it home.
Audiences can also step into experiences that challenge assumptions and offer a different perspective. At Curve, Have Your Passport Ready brings the original film-meets-video-game experience into the real world, placing audiences directly inside the UK’s hostile environment as they navigate an unfamiliar city and attempt to prove their right to remain. Created by Syrian brothers Khaled and Mohammad Aljawad, the work draws on lived experience to explore the realities behind the headlines. It forms part of a Stand and Be Counted Theatre double bill alongside F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real), a new work-in-progress play exploring collective trauma.
Rosie McPherson the Artistic Director and joint CEO of Stand and Be Counted Theatre who produced Have Your Passport Ready, said: “For British audiences, we hope this piece is a tool for better understanding. We know the arts is such a powerful way to build community and support for a shared mission, and we know so many people here want to know what they can do to help those who face the unknown in a new country.”
Skating onto the stage at Curve, is award-winning choreographer Jennifer Irons bringing
Bad Immigrant, a chaotic roller-disco combining German techno, absurd humour and roller skates to explore colonialism, identity and belonging. The performance supports Skates4Mates, a project bringing local and sanctuary-seeking communities together through the joy of roller skating.
Personal stories continue at the King Richard III Visitor Centre with The Luckiest Girl Alive, an intimate retelling of human rights activist Hoda Ali’s survival and recovery from FGM. Through puppetry and storytelling, audiences are invited into Hoda’s journey from survival to recovery and hope, and her determination to ensure other girls do not experience the same.
The festival will create opportunities to encounter art in unexpected places, with dance taking centre stage at Highcross Shopping Centre. Audiences can stumble upon live performances including Mughal Miniatures: The Awakening, a vibrant, family-friendly work inspired by traditional Indian and Persian miniature painting, and NADI (नदी), a new Kathak-contemporary performance exploring sacred rivers, climate grief and resilience.
The Hideout by Hikapee Theatre combines circus, parkour and storytelling to explore the highs and lows of making a new friend to Highfields Centre.
Newly commissioned installation CARE / REST / PLAY by artist Jasmine Smail invites children and families to explore three sculptures inspired by the past and present role of telephone boxes in connecting communities. Installed across Haymarket Shopping Centre, Leicester Central Library and Leicester Royal Infirmary, the work will bring part of the festival directly to children and families who may not otherwise be able to experience the wider programme.
From opera and poetry to roller skating, dance, creative play and community-made installations, Journeys Festival International 2026 is the festival’s biggest Leicester programme yet. 17 – 25 October 2026, Leicester City Centre.
Visit JourneysFestival.co.uk for more details about this year’s festival programme
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Art Reach (www.artreach.org.uk)
We commission bold, ambitious art and festivals that bring people together, deliver activities and authentic experiences that unify audiences and cultures. We empower a range of artistic voices that excite and surprise with fresh energy and new ideas. Together we explore complex pasts, reshape the present and imagine new futures. We celebrate the power of sanctuary, unleash expression and tell extraordinary stories.
Arts Council England (www.artscouncil.org.uk)
Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. Our vision, set out in our strategy Let’s Create, is that by 2030, we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish, and where every one of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences.
Between 2023 and 2026 we will have invested over £467 million of public money from Government, alongside an estimated £250 million each year from The National Lottery, to help ensure that people in every part of the country have access to culture and creativity in the places where they live. Until Autumn 2025, the National Lottery is celebrating its 30th anniversary of supporting good causes in the United Kingdom: since the first draw was held in 1994, it has raised £49 billion and awarded more than 690,000 individual grants.