Events
In summer the grounds of Ashton Court to the west of the city play host to the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, a major event for hot air ballooning in Britain. The Fiesta draws a substantial crowd even for the early morning lift that typically begins at about 6.30 am. Events and a fairground entertain the crowds during the day. A second mass ascent is then made in the early evening, again taking advantage of lower wind speeds.
The annual Bristol International Festival of Kites and Air Creations, featuring kite makers and flyers from around the world, takes place in September at Ashton Court.
From 1974 until 2007, Ashton Court also played host to the Ashton Court festival each summer, an outdoors music festival which used to be known as the Bristol Community Festival. Torrential rain during the 2007 festival and mounting costs incurred as a result of the Licensing Act 2003 led to the dissolution of the not-for-profit company which organized the event.
The annual Bristol Harbour Festival features displays of tall ships and musical performances.
The St Pauls Carnival also takes place in Bristol during the summer and features a procession and late night music.
The Bristol Slapstick Silent Comedy Festival celebrates silent film comedy every spring and the organisation also promotes screenings throughout the year. In November the Encounters Short Film Festival offers a platform for new short films.
The biennial Wildscreen Festival showcases wildlife filmmaking in the city that is home to the BBC Natural History Unit.
The Bristol Festival of Ideas is an annual programme of debates and other events, which aims to "to stimulate people’s minds and passions with an inspiring programme of discussion and debate". It was first set up in 2005 as part of the city's ultimately unsuccessful bid to become the European Capital of Culture for 2008, and awards an annual book prize, worth £10,000, to a book which "presents new, important and challenging ideas, which is rigorously argued, and which is engaging and accessible".
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Bristol
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)