Fastivals

professional arts festivals take place in Britain each year. An

arts festival or art fair is a festival that focuses on the visual arts, but which may also focus on other arts. Arts festivals in the visual arts are exhibitions. Artists' participation in the most important such exhibitions (such as the Venice Biennale) is by invitation, and these exhibitions are organized by internationally recognized curators chosen by a committee of peers. These international exhibitions must be distinguished from art fairs, market-oriented gatherings of art dealers and their wares, which have recently emerged as among the most important art-world venues for contemporary art in the present-day super-heated art market.

Festival is a collective term for several simultaneous arts and

cultural festivals that take place during August each year in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Edinburgh Festival, which is the largest cultural event in the world, traces its roots to 1947 when the Edinburgh International Festival was established in a post-war effort to "provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit".

Since the Edinburgh International Festival was organized in 1947, several other festivals have also been established in Edinburgh. Most of these take place in late summer each year, as well. There is, therefore, not one Edinburgh Festival, but a collection of independent festivals which happen to take place in the same city at about the same time.

is a book festival that takes place in the last

three weeks of August every year (in the midst of the general Edinburgh Festival) in Charlotte Square, in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital. Calling itself the largest festival of its kind in the world, the Book Festival hosts a concentrated flurry of cultural and political talks and debates, along with its well-established children’s events programme.

an annual fortnight of cinema screenings and related events taking

place each June. Established in 1947, it is the world's oldest continually running film festival. The EIFF aims to present both UK and international movie premieres and to exhibit the work of film-makers. The first EIFF, a programme of documentaries, was presented by the Edinburgh Film Guild alongside the 1947 Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), which continues to take place in August each year. At the time, Cannes and Venice were the most significant annual film festivals. Over the subsequent years, the programme expanded to include fiction films and experimental work in addition to documentary.

is an annual visual arts festival, held in Edinburgh, Scotland,

during August to coincide with the Edinburgh Festival. The Art Festival was established in 2004, and receives public funding from the Scottish Arts Council. The current Festival Director is Joanne S. Brown. The Edinburgh International Festival began in 1947, and significant visual art exhibitions were included in the early years. Not only did the exhibitions bring the works of foreign artists to Scotland, they cultivated an interest in Scotland amongst wealthy collectors and patrons from around the world.

are hundreds of Burns Clubs scattered throughout the world, and

on 25th January they all endeavour to hold Burns Night celebrations to mark the birth of Scotland's greatest poet. A Burns supper is a celebration of the life and poetry of the poet Robert Burns, author of many Scots poems including "Auld Lang Syne," which is generally sung as a folk song at Hogmanay and other New Year celebrations around the world. The suppers are normally held on or near the poet's birthday, 25 January, sometimes also known as Robert Burns Day or Burns Night (Burns Nicht), although they may in principle be held at any time of the year.

From origins in the eighteenth century Stratford-upon-Avon's Shakespeare birthday celebrations

have developed into a unique international occasion which annually brings together people from many countries, institutions and professions to do honour to the immortal memory of William Shakespeare. In Every year the anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare is celebrated with joyous ceremony at Stratford-upon-Avon, the Warwickshire market-town where he was born on April 23rd, 1564. Visitors to Stratford-upon-Avon can see all of the original five Shakespeare houses that are carefully restored and managed by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust so visitors can experience how they lived in the 1600's.

Flags are unfurled in the main street, people buy sprigs of rosemary ("for remembrance"*) to wear in their buttonholes, the Town Beadle* heads a long procession through the streets to the parish church where everyone in the procession deposits a wreath or a bouquet (or a simple posy) at the poet's grave, and in the evening there is a performance of the chosen "Birthday Play" in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre*.

of festivals held in Britain every summer goes on and

on increasing but few are as well established or highly thought of, particularly in the wider European scene, as the Bath Festival. In June when the city is at its most beautiful the festival attracts some of the finest musicians in the world to Bath, as well as thousands of visitors from Britain and abroad. The programme usually includes lectures and exhibitions, sometimes ballet, opera, drama, or films, as well as tours of Bath and the surrounding area and houses not normally open to the public, often a costume ball, maybe poetry - the variety is endless.

an annual celebration which occurs around the time of the

main harvest of a given region. Given the differences in climate and crops around the world, harvest festivals can be found at various times throughout the world. Harvests festivals typically feature feasting, both family and public, with foods that are drawn from crops that come to maturity around the time of the festival. Ample food and freedom from the necessity to work in the fields are two central features of harvest festivals: eating, merriment, contests, music and romance are common features of harvest festivals around the world. In Britain, thanks have been given for successful harvests since pagan times. The celebrations on this day usually include singing hymns, praying, and decorating churches with baskets of fruit and food in the festival known as Harvest Festival, Harvest Home or Harvest Thanksgiving. In British churches, chapels and schools and in Canadian churches, people bring in food from the garden, the allotment or farm. The food is often distributed among the poor and senior citizens of the local community, or used to raise funds for the church, or charity.