Fierce! is an international performance festival (previously produced by Fierce Earth [1] ) that has taken place annually in and around Birmingham, England since 1997. [2]
The launch of the 2004 festival, in May in Birmingham, England, was a group of hot air balloons that drifted over Birmingham's streets in the early hours of the morning playing soft music to "encourage dreams related to the music".
In May 2007, the artwork Una White was created as part of the festival.
Fierce! 11 was held over the May Bank Holiday, 23 to 26 May 2008 and the artists taking part in the festival were chosen by way of a public vote. The voting commenced on 20 March 2008 and concluded on 11 April 2008. [3]
The Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Warwick Arts Centre and Birmingham Hippodrome also collaborate heavily in the events.
In 2011 Fierce Festival reappeared after several years absence under the new joint artistic direction of Laura McDermott and Harun Morrison with the tagline 'Live Art. Collision. Super Local. Hyper Now.'
In 2013 Fierce launched Club Fierce XXX featuring New York rapper Cakes Da Killa grime MC Roxxxan, and electro punk satirist Quilla Constance.
In 2016, Aaron Wright became Artistic Director [4] and the first festival under his leadership took place in 2017.
In 2019 The Guardian Newspaper gave the Festival five stars and described it as 'a daring whirl of theatrical thrills' [5]
In 2024, after seven successful years, Aaron Wright left Fierce to become Head of Performance and Dance at the Southbank Centre and Clayton Lee become Director (Artistic) of Fierce alongside co-directors Pippa Frith (Producing) and Catherine Groom (Operations).
During his directorship Aaron led three outstanding editions of Fierce Festival in 2017, 2019 and 2022. In 2022 Aaron led special Fierce projects, Key to the City, a major participatory public realm artwork by Paul Ramírez Jonas and The Healing Gardens of Bab, a three week programme exploring colonialism and queerness, as part of Birmingham 2022 Festival for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Fierce festival has also presented performances by numerous artists including Ron Athey, Franko B, Gob Squad, Tim Miller, Forced Entertainment and more.
Heiner Goebbels is a German composer, conductor and professor at Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen and artistic director of the International Festival of the Arts Ruhrtriennale 2012–14. His composition Stifters Dinge (2007) received five votes in a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, and writers for The Guardian ranked his composition Hashirigaki (2000) the ninth greatest classical composition of the same period.
Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) is one of the five major ballet companies of the United Kingdom, alongside The Royal Ballet, the English National Ballet, Northern Ballet and Scottish Ballet. Founded as the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet, the company was established in 1946 as a sister company to the earlier Sadler's Wells company, which moved to the Royal Opera House that same year, subsequently becoming known as The Royal Ballet.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, England, on the South Bank of the River Thames.
Jeremy Deller is an English conceptual, video and installation artist. Much of Deller's work is collaborative; it has a strong political aspect, in the subjects dealt with and also the devaluation of artistic ego through the involvement of other people in the creative process. He won the Turner Prize in 2004 and represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2013.
Shakespeare's Globe is a realistic true-to-history reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse first built in 1599 for which William Shakespeare wrote his plays. Like the original, it is located on the south bank of the River Thames, in Southwark, London. The reconstruction was completed in 1997 and while concentrating on Shakespeare's work also hosts a variety of other theatrical productions. Part of the Globe's complex also hosts the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse for smaller, indoor productions, in a setting which also recalls the period.
English National Ballet is a classical ballet company founded by Dame Alicia Markova and Sir Anton Dolin as London Festival Ballet and based in London, England. Along with The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Northern Ballet and Scottish Ballet, it is one of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain. English National Ballet is one of the foremost touring companies in Europe, performing in theatres throughout the UK as well as conducting international tours and performing at special events. The Company employs approximately 67 dancers and a symphony orchestra,. In 1984 Peter Schaufuss became director and changed the name to English National Ballet and founded the school English National Ballet School, which is independent from the ballet company but joining the company premises in the new building. The Company regularly performs seasons at the London Coliseum and has been noted for specially staged performances at the Royal Albert Hall. In 2014 English National Ballet became an Associate Company of Sadler's Wells.
Dan Jones is a British composer and sound designer working in film and theatre. He read music at the University of Oxford, studied contemporary music theatre at the Banff Centre for the Arts and studied electro-acoustic composition and programming at the Centro Ricerche Musicali in Rome. Having explored various means of generating music algorithmically, he is the author of one of the earliest pieces of software for generating fractal or self-similar music. He has won BAFTA and Ivor Novello Awards.
Judith "Jude" Pamela Kelly,, is a British theatre director and producer. She is a director of the WOW Foundation, which organises the annual Women of the World Festival, founded in 2010 by Kelly. From 2006 to 2018, she was Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre in London.
ECNAD is a contemporary dance company founded in 1996 in Singapore with a multi-disciplinary approach.
The Manchester International Festival is a biennial international arts festival, with a specific focus on original new work, held in the English city of Manchester and run by Factory International. The festival is a biennial event, first taking place in June–July 2007, and subsequently recurring in the summers of 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021. MIF23 will take place in summer 2023. The organisation is based in Blackfriars House, adjacent to Blackfriars Bridge but is due to move to a new £110 million new home, Factory International, in 2023.
Talawa Theatre Company is a Black British theatre company founded in 1986.
Sean Foley is a British director, writer, comedian and actor. Following early success as part of the comedy double act The Right Size and their long-running stage show The Play What I Wrote, Foley has more recently become a director, including of several West End comedy productions. From 2019 to 2024, he was appointed as Artistic Director of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
John Woolrich is an English composer.
Black Grace is one of New Zealand's leading contemporary dance companies. Founded by Neil Ieremia in 1995, Ieremia draws from his Samoan and New Zealand roots to create innovative dance works that reach across social, cultural and generational barriers. Since its inception, Black Grace has changed the face of contemporary dance in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The work itself is highly physical, rich in the storytelling traditions of the South Pacific and expressed with raw finesse, unique beauty and power.
Paul Spicer is an English composer, conductor, and organist. He taught choral conducting at the Royal College of Music and conducted the RCM Chamber Choir between 1995 and 2008. Until his retirement in July 2022 he also taught at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and conducted their chamber choir which records for Somm Records. He also teaches at Oxford and Durham universities. Since 2004 he has been the conductor of the Petersfield Festival. He was Senior Producer for BBC Radio 3 for the Midlands Region based in Birmingham between 1984 and 1990 after which he moved to be artistic director of the Lichfield Festival. He also produced for various record companies over many years. He founded the Finzi Singers in 1984 making many recordings for Chandos Records. He conducts the Birmingham Bach Choir and the Whitehall Choir in London. His compositions include two oratorios for Easter and for Advent with libretti by the Dr Tom Wright and a choral symphony 'Unfinished Remembering' (2014) to a libretto by Euan Tait commemorating the outbreak of World War 1. He runs a series of choral courses under the banner of The English Choral Experience based mainly at Abbey Dore in Herefordshire.
David Farr is a British writer, theatrical director and Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Sonic Acts is an interdisciplinary arts organisation for the research, development and production of works at the intersection of art, science and theory. Sonic Acts is also a leading platform for international projects, research and the commissioning and co-production of new artworks, often working together with local and international partner organisations such as independent and institutional cultural incubators, universities and kindred festivals.
Rising is a city-wide arts festival held in Melbourne, Australia. The festival was announced in 2020 as Melbourne's premier arts and culture festival, replacing the Melbourne International Arts Festival and White Night Festival, and is supported by the Victoria State Government. Following two attempts to launch the festival in 2020 and 2021 disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, Rising has been held annually each June in Melbourne from 2022. The festival has received praise for the depth and variety of its events and First Nations programming, whilst also receiving critiques about its ability to capture the purpose and identity of its predecessors.
The opening ceremony for the 2022 Commonwealth Games took place on the evening of Thursday 28 July in the Alexander Stadium, Birmingham. As mandated by the Commonwealth Games Charter, the proceedings of the ceremony combined the formal opening of the sporting event with an artistic performance to showcase the host nation's culture. The 2022 Games were formally opened by Charles, Prince of Wales.