Heads Up Festival is a bi-annual contemporary performance, theatre and arts festival that takes place in the city of Hull.
The first Heads Up Festival took place in September 2013, with a line-up that included Made In China s Gym Party, Polarbear’s Mouth Open, Story Jump Out and The Paper Cinema’s Odyssey.
The second season, in March 2014, coincided with the opening of arts venue Kardomah 94 in a former office space that festival producers E52 had previously operated as a pop-up theatre space and with a line-up that included Will Dickie’s Team of the Decades, Jo Hellier’s 97 Years, Berkavitch’s Shame and Victoria Melody’s Major Tom.
Occupying parks, community centres, boxing gyms, churches, libraries and nightclubs as well as traditional theatre spaces; the festival imagines new contexts for performances that inspire audiences and artists alike by presenting work in a host of different environments.
Heads Up is produced by E52 in partnership with Battersea Arts Centre and is part of the Collaborative Touring Network. Our vision is a nation where everyone has inspiring art and culture on their doorstep.
Shows that have toured to Heads Up previously include Christopher Brett Bailey’s This is How We Die, Theatre Ad Infinitum’s Ballad of the Burning Star, Touretteshero’s Backstage in Biscuitland, Foreign Radical by Theatre Conspiracy, Kaleider’s The Money and Ground Control by Non Zero One.
Shows that are part of the Spring 2019 Heads Up Festival season include The Paper Cinema’s Macbeth, Caroline Williams & Reem Karssli’s Now is The Time To Say Nothing and Selina Thompson’s Race Cards.