THE wait is over! The Hair Fair the festival of street performance and Outdoor Arts – starts today in Winchester.

The main festival site – North Walls Recreation Ground – features some of the world’s most brilliant street performers (or ‘hatters’) including Jones and Barnard – who explore the eccentricities of the British through the universal language of eccentric dance, circus skills, comedy and song; Tit for Tat – use fiasco and mayhem to share our love of stories; Dizzy O’Dare’s The Giant Balloon Show – combines feverous balloon sculptures and high energy comedy and The Fairly Famous Family bring Wimbledon to Winchester in Anyone for Tennis?.

Opera North make their Hat Fair debut with a new whistle stop performance inspired by Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute; The Enchanted Flower Globe and Floris the mystical flower nymph will glide through the festival site; the dazzling and surreal The Lips will be re-animate favourite songs celebrating popular music; there will be giant bouncing kangaroos with Joy Magnet’s Roo’d; Etta Ermini Dance Theatre and Van Huynh Company bring Glam – a gloriously vibrant dance and circus show filled with acrobatics, disco, feathers and glitter! and Sam Goodburn – who was recently seen on ITV’s Game of Talents – brings his high wire show – Wire Attire.

Hat Fair is part of Without Walls – a national consortium of festivals that commissions artists to produce Outdoor Arts work. This year’s commissions performing at Hat Fair include Jeanefer Jean Charles’ Black Victorians - a dynamic dance piece inspired by the discovery of hundreds of portraits of Black people in England during the Victorian era. The characters in the portraits are brought to life through movement, text and music; Pif-Paf’s TOAST – a celebration of food, song, story, dance and fire performed on and around their ever-moving kitchen cart and includes a mixture of songs, stories and recipes from musicians and cooks all around the world; Charmaine Childs, the Strong Lady – a familiar face to Hat Fair audiences – brings Strong Enough – a powerfully optimistic show that uses circus physicality, comedy and feats of strength to find strength in unexpected places.

In addition to the main festival site, the Winchester School of Art Car Park will be the venue for 2 double bill events featuring Gravity and Levity’s Why? – a tender and exhilarating aerial duet exploring themes of life, loss, surrender and acceptance in a soft and moving way (Fri & Sat); the Britain’s Got Talent finalist Ben Hart returns to his home city with his astonishing sleight-of-hand, set against a backdrop of comedy and stories of wonder (Fri); and Yorke Dance Project – the dynamic contemporary ballet company will perform Dance Awakening (Sat).

The festival also provides a platform for local artists, musicians, dancers and talent with performances interspersed throughout the weekend – from bagpipes to Bulgarian dancers, blues and ragtime to indie rock. Today’s session on the North Walls Recreation Ground site has a more local community focussed programme and features the Top Hat competition - a competition for University of Winchester’s performance students and graduates to compete to win mentoring with Andrew Loretto, the Hat Fair Director, to develop a brand new show to appear at next year’s Hat Fair. The previous winner, Lottie Clist, will showcase her new show.

The Winchester based theatre company Blue Apple – who support performers with learning disabilities – bring their Special Assignments Company to perform The Super Fantastic Heroes about the inner superheroes in ordinary folk and the Blue Apple Singers will be performing some of their Greatest Hits; Out of Bounds bring a rowdy adventure, popular sea shanties and questionable accents in Beware of Pirates! and Louise Jordan’s Pop up Pedestal explores the concept of statues in public places.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, the annual family friendly event will take a different format to previous years with all three days taking place in the same adjacent venues – North Walls Recreation Ground and the Winchester School of Art Car Park, close to Winchester city centre. The festival remains unaffected by delay in lifting of the Covid restrictions as the event has been organised to comply with the current restrictions.

Hat Fair festival has previously been free to attend, it originated as a Busker’s festival with audiences traditionally throwing money into a hat after a hatters performance. However due to the ongoing Covid pandemic, rather than audiences crowding together and throwing money (and potentially germs) in to a hat, the hatters will be paid a fee from the ticket money raised. Ticketing the event also allows organisers – the charity Play to the Crowd - to limit the audience numbers to provide a Covid safe and secure event for audiences, staff, volunteers and artists alike.

Hat Fair runs from Friday 2 – Sunday 4 July 2021. Tickets for North Walls Recreation Ground are £8 per person (£6 on Friday), the double bill event tickets in Winchester School of Art Car Park are £5. Family group discounts are available. Tickets on sale now.

For more information and to book tickets visit hatfair.co.uk