Elevate Festival has wrapped for another year!
Our showcase for South-West artists took place between 12–18 October this year. Our Artist Development Producer, Sam Parker, looks back on the highlights of this year’s festival.
FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS
After the success of last year’s event, we brought back our annual celebration of South-West artists and their work: Elevate Festival in October 2025.
This year’s highlights included In Bed With My Brother, who were supported by our Elevate R&D programme and returned from Edinburgh with a Fringe First Award to headline our festival. Our Elevate Shorts, in partnership with the Special Collections at the University of Exeter, sold out again. Also, our new Scratch Partnership with Exeter Phoenix kicked off with a bang, and there were some great workshops with Katie Lusby, Ashley Pharoah and Landmark Theatres, to name a few.
Credit: South West Theatre Photography
Credit: Lillie Sherry
Needless to say, there were many more wonderful moments, but to mention everything would defeat the purpose of a ‘highlights’ section.
Please take a look at our full Elevate Festival programme and all the brilliant artists and organisations we worked with here.
View the full programmeThe feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and we are enormously grateful for the support we have received from our associate artists.
Sam Parker – Artist Development Producer
This was our second Elevate Festival, and we are pleased to report that our audience numbers for this year have almost tripled!
The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and we are enormously grateful for the support we have had from our associate artists, Elevate members, our wider arts communities, new audiences, and local stake holders and partners. These programmes only work with all those things in place, so thank you!
Credit: Lillie Sherry
Credit: Lillie Sherry
As usual, the team in-house at Exeter Northcott and Barnfield Theatres have gone above and beyond to help make the festival a success – all while Exe Men ran simultaneously at the Northcott Theatre. A mammoth effort across the board.
Here’s to year two of Elevate – we’ll be back with our festival next year!
Written by Sam Parker, our Artist Development Producer
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