Windsor Festival Spring Weekend 2010

Following our Fortieth Anniversary year and a successful Festival, we turn our attention to the next forty years. We begin this with a Spring Weekend programme which has greater breadth and content, coupled with a more significant role for the various styles of literary event.

WINDSOR SPRING FESTIVAL AT A GLANCE:

THURSDAY 18TH MARCH:

10am - AUDIENCE HEARING
As part of a new season of participatory and time-based art works, The Firestation presents Audience:Hearing the second part of a time-based artwork by Rachel Gomme.

11am - WINDSOR WALK - EDWARD VII AND GEORGE V
The year 1910 saw the death of King Edward VII and the accession of George V. On this walk you will hear about the characters of these two very different monarchs and life in Windsor during their reigns.

4.30pm - ISSP CHIOR
Beechwood School Slough, Eton College, Heston Community School, Slough & Eton CofE College, St Joseph's Slough, Windsor Boys' School.
These six schools form an Independant State Schools Partnership (ISSP) a choir has been formed as part of a singing project. Venue: Windsor Royal Shopping.

7pm - LORD HURD OF WESTWELL
Douglas Hurd is one of our most experienced Foreign Secretaries. His tenure at the Foreign Office coincided not only with the end of the Cold War but also the first war with Iraq and the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

7.45pm - FIRESTATION BOOK SWAP
Novelist Marie Phillips, author of Gods Behaving Badly, and publisher Scott Pack host an evening of conversation and banter with a cracking line-up of guest writers that promises to be rather different from the norm.

8.15pm - IN SILENCE, CREATION
This concert is given in memory of Dick and Sylvia Shaw. Dick was the first Honorary Secretary of Windsor Festival, and Sylvia was the last-surviving signatory of the Festival's founding document. The programme includes the world premiere of a work written by their son, Francis Shaw. Venue: Comberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park.

FRIDAY 19TH MARCH

10am - AUDIENCE: HEARING
As part of a new season of participatory and time-based art works, The Firestation presents Audience:Hearing the second part of a time-based artwork by Rachel Gomme.

10am - BOOKSTART BONANZA
Bookstart Bear invites you to come along to a fun-packed morning of stories, songs, rhymes and crafts, with a chance to pick up your free Bookstart Books Pack. Venue: Waterstones Peascod Street.

1pm - LITERARY LUNCH WITH WILLIAM FIENNES AND ALISON WEIR
William Fiennes published Snow Geese, a travl book about returning home.
Alison Weir is one of our most successful historians and novelists

8.15pm - THE CHOIR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
We welcome the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge to Windsor Festival for the first time. Under the direction of Stephen Layton, the programme glides through centuries of choral music in the beautiful acoustic of Eton College Chapel.

SATURDAY 20TH MARCH

10am AUDIENCE: HEARING
As part of a new season of participatory and time-based art works, The Firestation presents Audience:Hearing the second part of a time-based artwork by Rachel Gomme.

10.30am - KRAFT WERKS
A fun-packing, paint-splatting, fabric-painting, foot-tapping, clay-thwacking morning of arts, crafts, music and performance! Venue: The Firestation Arts Centre, St Leonards Road.

10.30am - CROWN ESTATE WALK - THE RIBBLESDALE CIRCLE
Meeting at Blacknest Gate we walk the Ribblesdale track through to Manor Hill from where we descend through ancient woodland to the banks of Virgina Water and cross the spectacular Five Arch Bridge before returning to Blackness Gate.

7.30pm - ORFF - CARMINA BURANA
Beginning and ending with the dramatic and ever-popular Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi, Carl Orff's setting of 24 secular poems takes in the frickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of Spring, and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling and lust.

7.30pm - BERKSHIRE MAESTROS
Berkshire Maestros showcases the best of the region's young musicians. The programme includes performances from many of the organisation's ensembles including the Berkshire Youth Choir and the Country Percussion Ensemble.

SUNDAY 21ST MARCH

7pm - STAINER - THE CRUCIFIXION
Join the massed choirs of Windsor's churches for a devotional performance of Stainer's choral masterpiece.

8pm - VOY A EXPLOTAR (15)
A tender, beautiful film charged with youthful energy. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Priority Booking (by post) for Friends and Benefactors will be available until Monday 22nd February. (Windsor Festival Society Ltd, 3 Park Street, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1LU)

In Person booking at the Information Centre is open from Wednesday 24th February from 10am-4pm seven days a week at The Old Booking Hall, Windsor Royal Station (opposite Windsor Castle).

Postal Booking opens on Tuesday 23rd February.

Online Booking on the festival website opens at 10am on Wednesday 24th February

Telephone Booking opens at 10am on Wednesday 24th February.