This Bright Land is a major new cultural festival taking place across the month of August at Somerset House. Born out of the adversity and dislocation of recent times, it seeks to offer a hopeful, optimistic celebration of community and culture. Using large scale entertainment and play, the aim is to encourage empathy between different communities and in doing so make a new space for creativity, conversation and collaboration.
This Bright Land strives to engage with communities that identify as underrepresented in a meaningful way, with the hope of building long-lasting relationships. This work is being guided by This Bright Land’s Advisory Group, which is made up of representatives from We Exist, Vogue Rites and BLM Fest, alongside a handful of ‘critical friends.’ Together, we are all striving to build a culture of equity around the project, which begins with resourcing grassroots and emerging voices from the ground up, recognising the systemic gaps in opportunity that they face within the cultural sector.
The model for This Bright Land ensures we keep to these guiding principles of opportunity and access, holding space for under-represented voices and welcoming new audiences. It includes many initiatives such as working with Black Eats LDN and London’s Ballroom community, alongside efforts to remove financial barriers for attendance and an allocation of free meals.
Launching a new month-long cultural event at this scale in such a precarious time is a major undertaking. Both Somerset House Trust (an independent charity) and creative directors Carson McColl and Gareth Pugh (co-founders of design studio Hard + Shiny) have invested significant time and financial resources into making This Bright Land a reality. We do so because we believe in it.
This Bright Land is a story about hope and common purpose. Our wish is that it not only brings happiness to people — creating a space for joy and fun and shared experience — but also reminds us all that we have more in common than what divides us.
