Richmond Arts & Ideas Festival is communities coming together through dance, music, outdoor experiences, theatre, visual art, discussion forums and imagination.  

An expansive, collaborative, interdisciplinary programme across 40 partners, 2 weeks and 70 experiences and  events, will fill the borough with arts and ideas for its  second outing, the first joyous success that last look place during the Summer of 2023.  

Building on the colour and energy of past festivals, this year’s, in June 2025, takes on the theme of Cultural Reforesting, and asks the question: how can we renew our relationship with nature? 

RuptureXIBIT’s artists in residence are welcome to read the prompt of Cultural Reforesting against the grain, presenting work which responds in unexpected ways. Please reflect your impulse in your proposal.

Cultural Reforesting is a collective, artist-led response to ecological crises and energises action through a range of interdisciplinary experiences and voices, allowing the imagination to  give hope and every day new ways of being.  

Past responses have taken on subjects such as food and agriculture, climate crisis, plant  blindness, more-than-human agency, environmental justice, well-being, and youth voice. All create and tell evolving stories, intimate stories, soaring stories of our place as part of  nature, built on the knowledge of many.  

Backdrop:  

Culture is now seen as an imperative in responding to the ecological crisis, with international organisations stating a cultural shift is required for long-term change – this is where Cultural Reforesting sits, what does this shift look like, feel like, and who does it involve (everyone, including the more than-human world), and how can it reverberate through our every day. 

LBRuT declared climate emergency in 2019, what does this mean in practice?  

2025 is halfway through the decade scientists have declared as the time we need to act. What does this action look like locally; how might it resonate globally? 

Richmond is a land of parks, rivers, high streets, homes - vibrant ecosystems – we are custodians of these places, sharing them with a huge array of international species – how might cultural experiences in these places renew a relationship held deep within every human animal that brings to life how we might comprehend looking after our planet, and with it ourselves? 

There is a lot of work to be done."

• Environmental justice 

• Biodiversity, ecology and botany    

• Climate Emergency    

• Indigenous knowledge and perspectives    

• Local solutions    

• Imagination and creativity    

• Well-being    

• Ecocentrism 

• Education   

Click to read more about the Festival