Once Upon A Festival to return to the Marina Theatre by popular demand!

A popular children’s arts festival will soon return to the Marina Theatre in Lowestoft.

Once Upon A Festival, now in its fourth year, aims to promote arts for everyone - and this year runs from Sun 10 to Fri 22 June.

The festival will allow young people to experience a vibrant mix of dance, theatre and poetry performances - featuring some of the best children’s performances companies from across the UK.

Led by Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, the festival has other partner venues including Meet Up in Thetford, John Pell Centre Stowmarket and Market Place.

The festival runs a schools programme, where two enrichment workshops will be delivered by professional facilitators, and young people will then get the chance to enjoy a show at the Marina.

These family orientated shows include The Gruffalo’s Child on June 19 at 1.30pm and 4.30pm and at 10.30am and 1.30pm on June 20. The 10.30am show will be a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreted performance. Furthermore, The Little Mermaid from Ballet Theatre UK, can also be enjoyed at 7.30pm on June 13.

Currently, the Marina is working with 11 schools on the storytelling festival – for key stages one to three.

In addition, to help launch the festival, the theatre will be holding an open day on June 16 - from 10am until 4pm.

This will be run in conjunction with ROJO arts with plenty of exciting activities happening.

Last year the Festival provided 13 productions at partner venues with an additional 13 reaching families and schools. 61 events in total were programmed, 28 schools took performances in their own spaces for 32 performances and a further 8 schools visited partner venues making a total of 36 different schools participating in the Festival from Suffolk and Norfolk.

To help engage the children even further, 27 sessions were provided to deliver post-show enrichment workshops reaching a total of 1608 children. Overall the festival reached a total of 5602 audience members and there was some great feedback received from them.

Will Isgrove, head of young people and Outreach at the Marina Theatre, said: "We are delighted to once again be working in partnership with Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds to present 'Once Upon A Festival'.

"We have a really exciting range of shows for young people to enjoy - with schools able to take part in professionally designed supplementary workshops to augment their experience."

For more information about the performances at the Marina Theatre, call the box office on 01502 533200 or visit our what’s on page.

If you are interested in your school taking part, click HERE or email willisgrove@marinatheatre.co.uk