The Warwick Arts Festival: A whirlwind weekend championing the student creative scene

Live music is a tenet of the University of Warwick and this pillar of campus life was established right from the beginning in the 70s. Students in 2023 can attest to melodies ringing out of the Arts Centre practice rooms at all times, from Mozart to modern pop, and piano solos to our incredible orchestras. With over 30 bands participating in BandSoc’s Battle of the Bands and more than 20 ensembles in the University’s own music centre – and all of these groups being student-run – the student live music scene could not be more alive and well. Although, this remains a testament to our predecessors from the founding of the University, with the campus being known from day one as one of the places outside of London to host big names as they made their way through the industry. Even before the commissioned construction of the Arts Centre in 1974, the Students’ Union hosted numerous  notable acts, including Pink Floyd and Bob Marley & the Wailers, both of whose legacies still ring throughout the music industry today.

The Students’ Union hosted numerous notable acts, including Pink Floyd and Bob Marley & the Wailers

Crucially, despite the star-studded guest list the University has seen over the last 50 years, it has always championed equality of opportunity for anybody to participate in live  performances. In an entry from the Coventry Music Archive’s Blog, Trev Teasdel describes not fitting in amongst the other poets at one of the University’s festivals, but remaining determined to go up and perform his reading. While Teasdel recounts a room of poets in tuxedos waiting to go on stage, there is no longer any certain type of look of a creative on campus. With dozens of societies carving creative space on campus, from Warwick Creatives to Black Untitled to Line (Warwick Fashion and Editorial Society) to Word Society, the diversity found in this next generation of creative minds is probably at the height of what the University has seen so far. This leaves a very exciting image of what’s to come from young artists on campus across all artistic forms, yet it’s the mixed media arts festivals of the 1970s that established a central point for student performance and expression.

The annual Warwick University Arts Festival, taking place over a weekend (Friday to Sunday) in early March, brought together both students and local performers in a symphonious blend of self-expression, whether through music, poetry, theatre or dance. The beauty of the festival was its open arms welcoming anyone in. For performers, even without a designated slot, they had the opportunity to go on stage in the ‘Open House’ hours where “anyone [can] come up on stage and do anything”. The festival was also a fun for the whole family event, with numerous plays in the Warwick Children’s Theatre and even a grand kite competition (though this is something I’m sure would not just excite kids).

The acts on offer traversed continents and epochs, as the 1974 Festival hosted a classical Indian troupe named Gupta, comprising a sitar, table and tamboura

A jam-packed schedule for one incredibly cheap (£1 – £2) all-inclusive ticket meant the campus was truly taken over by the arts for this weekend. The claws of inflation held their grip even in the 70s, with a 25p incremental increase in ticket price each year, but with a ‘high’ price of £2 in 1975 for three packed days of entertainment, this entry fee is a complete steal. The programme lists not only concerts spanning genres including folk, classical and rock, but film screenings, dance performances, one act plays that run on all three days, shows, guitar recitals and more. Yet even outside the scheduled programming, there was no shortage of artistic action to be found, with an abundance of Street Theatre as well as Troubadours busking around the buildings, not to mention the art and photography exhibitions. Even within the music scene at the festival, the acts on offer traversed continents and epochs, as the 1974 Festival hosted a classical Indian troupe named Gupta, comprising a sitar, table and tamboura, as well as Gryphon, who resurfaced lutes and crumhorns to immerse themselves (and the audience) in Mediaeval music.

Preceding the Warwick University Arts Festival was the Lanchester Arts Festival, organised by Lanchester Polytechnic (now Coventry University), which was a one week affair that drew many Warwick students and featured substantially in the editions of Campus (the former Warwick newspaper) at the time. The Lanchester Festival invited some exciting acts, significantly hosting Monty Python’s first live performance at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. Tickets were sold in cities across the country, from Manchester to London; this big affair still left a gap for a student-run festival that provided an avenue for anyone to perform. In the 67th edition of Campus, published in 1970, then-student Bob Bone picked up on the “possibility of involving the community in the area of the University and students and staff of the University”, and then went on to ask “What better way could there be than through an Arts Festival?”.

And he was absolutely correct. Bringing together local performers alongside student-led acts, the Warwick Arts Festival drew crowds from around the surrounding areas, with ticket pickups available across Coventry, Leamington Spa and Kenilworth and an atmosphere conducive to all groups and interests. Championing this community spirit, every festival also has opportunities for attendees to get involved deeper into the arts, running both workshops, such as a blues workshop, as well as having acts with audience participation – my favourite of which being “The Catastrophic Cosmic Climax Show”, described as being a concert, a party and more with “a cast of thousands … including yourselves”. If I could visit one event from the festival, it would probably be “Through the looking glass: a human chess game” just for the sheer absurdity; perhaps this is something we should resurface and bring that one Harry Potter scene back onto the hallowed halls of Warwick University.

The opportunity to experiment has always been a central point of the student arts scene at Warwick

The opportunity to experiment has always been a central point of the student arts scene at Warwick, and continuing the legacy of the 70s, we have a plethora of ways on campus to exercise your creative brain. The whole host of different societies, with new ones springing up each year to cater to more and more niches, run incredible events, with a highlight of last year being BandSoc’s WICKFEST. Set up with a stage outside of Senate House, the booming bass could be heard from the path to Tesco, as students lay, danced and cheered on the lawn outside of the FAB, drifting in and out throughout the day as they revelled in 9 hours of free live music from our very own talented student body.

Live music at Warwick had a strong folk epicentre in the 70s, which has transformed more towards rock, hiphop and rap with the prominence of BandSoc and Warwick Creatives across campus, whose regular showcases and open mic nights are a core avenue to feel the campus community come together to support aspiring artists, or just anyone who wants to try something new. Yet these events and societies still span genres as they did in the 70s, with acoustic sets and various solo acts always to be found. Still today, student artists can be seen to “row their artistic boats against the waves of artistic conformity” and find new ways to break the mould, as Trevor Teasdel described the acts of the Warwick Arts Festival in the 1970s.

Besides human chess, if there were one thing we should revive from the 70s it is definitely the mixed media Arts Festival that runs all across the campus. While every creative society has their niche and excels in it, they only burrow further into their individual areas and we have no focal point to experience all the Warwick arts scene has to offer in one whirlwind weekend. Imagine the FAB spilling with spoken word poets; one act plays in the Oculus seminar rooms; troubadours trailing through Social Sciences; the WICKFEST stage in its glory outside Senate House and T-Bar, the Copper Rooms and Fusion as late night bars and retro disco halls, bringing back the festival of student arts that runs into the early hours of the morning as it did in the 70s. As a weekend you would never want to end and a core memory of your Warwick experience, we could bring back the festival to be even bigger and better, celebrating the significantly more diverse and international student body we now have, with poems, dances, theatre music and more that span not only genres, but cultures and languages.