Tour de Moon Festival
Bringing together talks, cinema, music and games all under one cosmic theme – Tour de Moon is truly a festival like no other. Tour de Moon celebrates the relationship between Earth and the Moon with a number of thought-provoking, exciting and original experiences, with a special focus on nightlife, creativity and culture. Tour de Moon is a public festival; tickets are free and can be obtained here.
On its epic journey across the country, Tour de Moon is stopping in Newcastle, when four days of interactive events are taking place across a range of city venues, designed to appeal to everyone from amateur sports teams to die-hard clubbers.
The Newcastle locations to be featured in the festival, which will include an afterparty at World Headquarters until 5am on Saturday, 28 May, are Walker Activity Dome, The Discovery Museum, the Star & Shadow Cinema and the Lime Street creative quarter in the heart of the Ouseburn district.
Partygoers can expect to see live DJ sets from Alannah Lamb and Becky Woodcock and live performances from Hannabiell & Midnight Blue Collective as part of Moon Music.
Across the four days, Newcastle’s up-and-coming creatives and cultural tastemakers will take to stages across the city to talk, debate, create and collaborate in Moon Talks. The line-up includes theatre maker Melody Sproates, comedy performer and podcaster Lee Kyle and Queer Jewish dance artist Jesse Salaman.
Also part of the festival is Moon Experiences; designed to completely repurpose disused buildings within city centres, creating surreal and unusual theatrical spaces. In Newcastle, this includes a takeover of two warehouses in Lime Street, Ouseburn. Visitors can find themselves immersed in plays developed with new talents, whilst taking a trip to the Moon on psychedelic buggy rides.
The Moon Convoy, which arrives on Nelson Street in the city on 27 May, features huge floats and interactive elements starting with a large rotating moon that appears and disappears at night with further interactive and ultra-violet experiences – expect cosmic transformations through live music and DJ sets, a full size replica of nine metre-long Archie The Squid who resides at The Natural History Museum, talks, film screenings, an inflatable game designed with the help of scientists at NASA SSERVI and the SETI Institute, a nine-piece Arkestra and a larger than life red telephone through which visitors can talk to the Moon. There will be plenty of opportunities to capture the Convoy on its parade through Newcastle, which sets off from Civic Centre Car Park from Saturday 18:30.
Tour de Moon is made up of eight different strands as follows:
MOON EXPERIENCES: Moon Experiences is arriving to completely repurpose disused buildings within city centres, creating surreal and unusual theatrical spaces. Visitors can find themselves immersed in plays developed with new talents, whilst taking a trip to the Moon on psychedelic buggy rides. It includes a SoundBath by Loss><Gain, with an original 2 hour experience featuring music and new compositions from some stellar musicians, experimentalists and composers such as Yelfris Valdès, Riz Ahmed, Oliver Coates, Jatinder Singh Durhailay & Suren Seneviratne; Roella Oloro, Rival Consoles, Gruff Rhys, Cosmo Sheldrake, Anna Meredith, Kae Tempest, Jarvis Cocker and more to be announced. 18+
MOON MUSIC: Moon Music brings the ‘afterparty’ to festival proceedings, a selection of the most unique new musical talents merging popular music with recordings of the galaxy, to create a new musical genre. Moon Music brings together Arkestra (nine young musicians and truth seekers on board a mobile convoy across England); Moon Recordings (a series of newly-commissioned alien musical genres); and Moonbounce (transmission to the
Moon, an Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) technology) to club nights. There is also the moon on the dancefloor… 18+
Featured Newcastle artists and musicians include: Alannah Lamb (DJ), Georgia May (Live act), Nadedja (Live act), RENOK9000 (DJ), Weston (DJ), Becky Woodcock (DJ), Hannabiell & Midnight Blue Collective (Live act), Knats (Live act), PDT (DJ) and Westy (DJ).
MOON TALKS: Tour de Moon aims to shape our common futures through talks, performance, performed manifestos and sensory delights. Moon Talks – a key pillar of the festival – features a vibrant, pluralistic mix of voices sharing their electric experiences of nightlife through their passion for the moon, science, dancing and debates. 18+
Featured Newcastle speakers and creatives include: poet and activist Dami Fawehinmi, comedian Lee Kyle and dance artist Jesse Salaman, with more to be announced.
MOON CINEMA: Moon Cinema is a collection of original new short films created by a new generation of filmmakers selected through an international competition. These films explore untraveled terrain, innovative aesthetics and urgent messages on care and youth countercultures and their experiences with nightlife. With Moon Cinema, Tour de Moon provides a platform for unique discourses and non-linear narratives on science subjects. 18+
The Star & Shadow, Newcastle’s volunteer-run community cinema, provides the backdrop for Moon Cinema.
MOON CONVOY: Moon Convoy is a fully sustainable armada of vehicles, stopping in towns and cities across the UK – with its arrival in Newcastle marking the beginning of a four-days fully programmed festival. On its journey around the country, Moon Convoy will stops at a further nine towns and cities on the way, featuring big floats and interactive pieces starting with a large rotating moon that appears and disappears at night with further interactive and ultra-violet experiences – expect cosmic transformations through live music and DJ sets, a full size replica of nine metre-long Archie The Squid who resides at The Natural History Museum, talks, film screenings, an inflatable game designed with the help of scientists at NASA SSERVI and the SETI Institute, a nine-piece Arkestra and a larger than life red phone through which visitors can talk to the Moon.
MOON GAMES: What if the Moon had landed on Earth? What if the Moon was a psychedelic inflatable playground; a lunar landscape on which to play Moon Games? Collaborating with astrophysicists, sports groups and youth organisations and designed by NASA, Tour de Moon has fabricated all of this for eager attendees. It’s time to explore the Moon! 16+
MOON HOTLINE: Moon Hotline is a digital exploration of our own potential. AI (Artificial Intelligence) powered conversations with our new therapist (the Moon), digital experiences taking the form of a giant red phone, and a cascade of memes, videos and music by new talents around the world. It creates a radical online experience for anyone to explore, disappear and reappear…in a wormhole!
MOON PRESS: Moon Press is an urgent intervention into publishing. A zine that works to break down conventions between the environment, humans, and outer space. Moon Press is released at every full moon with a rotation of monthly appointed guest editors, designers and a selection of brilliant artists that challenge the status quo and offer alternatives for new futures.
BURSARIES: Nelly’s team has allocated more than £1m of its budget to bursaries for young creatives to produce their own original contributions for the event’s eight strands.
Those who were awarded financial support have also had the opportunity to collaborate with leading scientists and thinkers from NASA SSERVI (Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute), the African Astronomical Society and the SETI (Search for the Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, among others.
Nelly hopes the event will amplify a plurality of young creative voices and ignite radical imagination.
FULL DETAILS Newcastle 27 May - 30 May 2022
Moon Experiences - 51 Lime Street, Ouseburn, NE1 2P
Moon Games (10.00-16.00)- Walker Activity Dome
Moon Cinema (Friday and Saturday, 12.00-20.00) – Star & Shadow
MoonTalks (Sunday 15.00-18.00)- Star & Shadow
Bar Talks (Saturday 15.00-18.00)- Discovery Museum
Bar Talks (Friday-Monday 19.30-23.00)- WORLD HQ Room 1
Tour de Moon Afterparty (Saturday only 23.00-05.00) - WORLD HQ Room 2
Moon Music (Friday and Saturday 19.00-00.00) - WORLD HQ Room 2
