VAULT Festival, one of the largest curated arts festivals in the world, has announced more than 400 shows for their 2019 programme. Now in its seventh year, VAULT Festival returns to London from 23rd January to 17th March with the best in new writing for theatre and comedy, immersive experiences, cabaret, live performance and late night parties. Their exciting and diverse programme features shows from more than 2,000 artists, with 53% of work being female-led and 25% of work coming from LGBTQIA+ artists.
Starting in 2012 with only 25 shows and 7,000 attendees, VAULT Festival has become the fastest growing arts festival in the UK, hosting over 350 shows in 2018 and welcoming more than 70,000 audience members.
In 2019, performances will take place across Waterloo with multiple spaces located underground in the festival’s central hub, The Vaults. Other festival venues include London’s secret community performance space The Network Theatre, upstairs at The Horse & Stables pub, Granby Place, and the Travelling Through Bookshop on Lower Marsh where you can catch fresh material from television favourites and hot new comics. Unit 9 on Leake Street will be a space dedicated to ground-breaking immersive performances while other pop-up venues include shipping containers, caravans and escape rooms.
For 2019, VAULT Festival is delighted to support two important causes: Help Refugees and Child.org. All ticket transactions for VAULT Festival will provide audiences with the opportunity to donate to Help Refugees, providing humanitarian aid to displaced people around the world. Child.org will host an exclusive stage at The Horse & Stables pub and receive a percentage of ticket sales to support their Team Mum campaign, helping to fund pregnancy services in rural Kenya that offer health information and medical support for new mothers.
VAULT Festival will continue its partnership with WeAreWaterloo, supporting the local community with a range of initiatives aimed at residents and under 25s. The Festival is expanding its engagement scheme with SURGE, a brand new pilot programme of cross-arts projects, working with schools in the area to provide workshops and outreach performances.
Proudly supported by Nick Hern Books, the VAULT Festival New Writers Programme will offer an eight-week practical writing course for prospective writers of any age, enabling them to develop a piece of writing for the stage, culminating in a public showcase in the final week of the Festival. VAULT Festival will also offer up to 10,000 2-4-1 tickets through their Official App Partner Stagedoor.
In collaboration with Meantime Brewing, VAULT Festival will be adding to their array of bars with a specially designed and purpose-built new craft beer bar. Local culinary masters PopCo will be serving up an EU inspired menu. The festival is investing in 12,000 reusable cups to significantly reduce single-use waste, alongside a switchover to paperless tickets, a ban on plastic straws, and a guarantee that all food and beverage packaging is biodegradable or recyclable.
The VAULT Festival team commented, VAULT Festival started as an idea to bring artists and audiences together in an unusual space, in exciting spaces, to see if we could make a new model for the creative industry. A few years later, our audience has stuck with us and grown beyond our wildest hopes. We want VAULT Festival to be the people’s festival, designed around the audience, the artists, and our staff, without unfairly disadvantaging any of them. They are the very core of what makes VAULT work, and what makes us special.
