The Fête of Britain

Dash Arts is part of the 2024 Féte of Britain tour, with A workshop that will give you the tools you need to write, speak out and be heard, making powerful, persuasive and passionate speeches of your own. Learn new skills and share your speech with a wider audience during the 2024 Fête of Britain Tour the same day!

What is Hard Art?

Hard Art is a collective of musicians, artists, faith leaders, and others who have come together to imagine a new direction for the UK that feels right for the times we live in. Its members include the musician Brian Eno, designer Es Devlin, artists Jeremy Deller and Cornelia Parker, and a host of other makers, doers, community and faith leaders, who believe in culture, community and creativity to change things.

What is the Fête of Britain?

The Fête of Britain is a space for everyone to come together and talk about the issues affecting people in the UK today. It’s a celebration of British culture and creativity, an invitation to people, young and old, to share their ideas for how we face up to the challenges of the 21st century. We all want safer neighbourhoods, fairer prices and better public services for those we love and the place we call home. We all care about the fate of our country and an idea of what it looks like. So how do we share those ideas, and how do we get there?

What is the November 2024 Fête of Britain Tour to Luton, Peterborough, Corby and Great Yarmouth? 

Hard Art is coming to you, because we want to meet you on your patch. The fate of Britain is in everyone’s hands, and what we do together matters most to us where we live. So please come out, bring your art and guitars and ideas and imagination, bring your cups of tea and grumbles and jokes. Let’s make things, chat, share a brew, explore how smiles can be the next global currency, think about what’s best about where you live, and figure out how to make safer, fairer and better places for those we care about. 

Other Installations:

Sweatshop at the tour

Sweatshop is an immersive experience of Fashion based in Care from artist collective - Love After Oil. Participants are invited into a post fossil fuel making process, where they design their own cosy sweatshirt, and then pedal power the machine while it is sewn together in front of them. Sweatshop is performed at festivals, and community events, sometimes with custom printed fabric, always with upcycled wool blankets, deadstock designer Italian wool and the softest organic cotton. The Sweatshirts created (approximately one every 20 minutes) are unique to each event and each individual, giving participants a taste of what we can achieve when we rebuild culture with Care at the very centre.

Public Living Room

Camerados is a social movement who think being a bit more human is a good idea and believe that the answer to our problems is each other. They’ll be opening their pop-up Public Living Room - welcoming, no-agenda places for folk to sit down with a cuppa, have a chat, and feel more human.

The 6 principles of the Public Living Room 

- No Fixing, just be alongside

- It's OK to be a bit Rubbish

- Mix with others not like you

- It's OK to disagree

- To be silly is to be more human

- If you see someone struggling ask them to help you

Currency of Smiles

Bureau of Silly Ideas are bringing their Currency of Smiles research on tour. Research shows that smiles both reveal, and actually cause, complex physiological processes within the human body, facilitating relaxation and joyful emotions, but also regulating stress, promoting cardiovascular and immune system health, and relieving pain. 

Smiles crucially also indicate an increase in oxytocin, the hormone promoting feelings of trust, belonging, empathy, and social bonding, cohesion and investment, impulses vital for healthy communities.

With AI-powered, ethically-driven facial recognition technology, a new question has emerged: ‘what is the value of a smile’? Can the Smile play a powerful role as a wellbeing data metric, a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to identify local levels of wellbeing, and bolster arguments to transition from an economy based on GDP to a Wellbeing Economy? 

And at a time when new digital coins are born every hour, can the Smile itself form the bedrock of a new currency?

Census of Britain

Welcome to the Common Census.

We invite you to cast your votes in this highly researched & deeply statistical study of our shores. 

Come along, grab some stickers and help us to paint a true picture of our country in 2024. 

Brought to you by Mikesian Studio.