Let the Festival of Chichester 2024 begin!

The festival runs from Saturday, June 15 to Sunday, July 21. Tickets online: www.thenovium.org/boxoffice; email: [email protected]; box office: 01243 816525.

Festival president Kate Mosse is thrilled with the programme: “I'm a Chichester girl born and bred and I've lived in Chichester or the surrounding area for 45 of my 62 years. I love Chichester and I love everything about it. I love the landscape and the seascape and the community and the fact that there is history in every stone and I also love the fact that in Chichester the arts are everywhere and they are for everyone. You have got an internationally important theatre and you've got the Fishbourne Roman Palace and you've got the wonderful canal and you've got the cathedral. You have just got so much in Chichester. Everywhere you look there is an opportunity to listen, to play, to become involved, and the arts exist in Chichester at every level from national and international right down to the people who go along to a choir every Thursday just for the sheer joy of it.

“As an author I travel up and down the country and obviously across Britain there are arts festivals but what I think is so remarkable about Chichester and what is so exceptional is that it is such a tiny place and yet you get this extraordinary range of arts coming out of it

“The reason I love the Festival of Chichester is the fact that the Festival of Chichester is about local people. It's about local artists and craftspeople and singers and writers at a very very local level but you also got the big names and the performers of international standing. The Festival of Chichester brings it all together and it provides a focal point. It showcases so many organisations, bringing new audiences to these organisations but also bringing a great buzz and lots of fun. You can listen to a really local string quartet which will play beautifully and then you can listen to the world- renowned Chichester Singers. It is really such an exceptional place, and the Festival of Chichester brings the very best of it all together. It throws open the doors and it says ‘Come on in!’

Among the musical highlights this year at the Festival of Chichester, The Chichester Singers summer concert will be in Chichester Cathedral; Pzazz Singers take to the stage in the Assembly Room, North Street; Ensemble Reza will be celebrating women in music; and Underground Blues offers Will Johns live. The Mera Horn Trio offer a programme of Brahms & Smyth in Christ Church; Plastikes Karekles will delight with a Greek serenade in St Paul’s Church; and Chichester Pride will offer a Summer Late at Pallant House Gallery. At this year's Poetry & Jazz Café poets Maura Dooley and Jeremy Page link with Mike Carey’s Big House and there will be a festival Last Night Of The Proms concert in St Paul’s Church from The Southdowns Concert Band. The Hampshire Recorder Sinfonia will be returning; and Flowers and Flirtations in Christ Church will feature Tamzin Barnett (soprano) and Birgit Rohowsky Miller (piano).

Your Ideas For Our City in the Assembly Room will offer a special forum as Chichester looks to the future. Meanwhile, Festival of Chichester president Kate Mosse will launch The Ghost Ship paperback at Waterstones in West Street. Her husband Greg Mosse will lead a day at West Dean College entitled How To Write A Mystery Novel. West Dean head gardener Tom Brown will be in conversation with festival chairman Phil Hewitt; and actor and playwright Steven Berkoff reads from Lord Byron’s classic poem Don Juan in a festival special.

The Festival of Chichester is generously supported by Chichester City and Chichester District Councils. Kenton Budd Estate Agents is the Festival’s principal sponsor.