UPCOMING EVENTS - SWIFT FESTIVAL 2025

The Swift Festival is a programme of artistic events that uses a returning swift colony to highlight the ecological systems that exist in our neighbourhood and to explore our community’s relationship to them. It will use collective artistic practice to engage our neighbours in reimagining their relationship to those natural systems and deepen their sense of place and ownership of their neighbourhood. Through visual art, music, writing, screenings, talks, a parade and a street party, the Festival is an invitation to think more deeply about how to protect and cherish our local biodiversity.

Bon Volks Studios
Margate

May 2025

Online Swift-stake

Take part in our online ‘swift-stake’ on social media and guess the swifts’ arrival date on Dane Park Road in Margate. We have partnered with Little Swift and Youngs Nurseries who are kindly sponsoring the draw offering vouchers to win.

All you have to do is pick an arrival date and let us know here!

Festival opening - mural unveiling

Join us for an evening celebrating the opening of the Swift Festival! We'll unveil a mural painted by artist Adam Bartlett in the Bon Volks project space. This temporary display reflects the ephemeral presence of swifts in Margate, capturing their fleeting nature. The mural, spanning the two main walls, will immerse visitors in the world of swifts, creating a powerful visual experience. The mural will act as a background to the talks and events taking place at Bon Volks during the festival.

June/July 2025

Bon Volks Studios
Margate

Swift - an animated short film

Swifts are part of our neighbourhood’s natural heritage—their return each year is a special event. Discover this new short created by artist and animator Ruralidyll. The animation is a reminder of the unique relationship between the swifts and the community, highlighting the joy and significance of their return each year. It aims to encourage residents to take simple actions to form a meaningful connection with the swifts and protect their nesting spaces.

Swift inspired metal votives

In honour of the swifts’ incredible pilgrimage and rare reprieve from flight, we will consider ourselves as innkeepers, offering respite to the weary pilgrim. Run by metalsmith and artist Billie M Vigne, the sessions will be an opportunity to make embossed aluminium offerings influenced by the tradition of Pilgrim badges, reflecting on our own and each other’s arduous journeys and places of rest. We will use these offerings to decorate one symbolic swift box which will constitute this session’s shrine, with the potential for it to be used by Bon Volks as a functioning nesting box.

1 x 2h session litter picking/metal can hunting around the local area
1 x 2hr session making (deconstructing + cleaning the metal cans + embossing)
Suitable for anyone aged 12 and above.
Free workshop (15 places available, please book via the link)
Please let us know your access needs via the booking form.

BOOK HERE

Swift One

Join us for a live performance and explore fresh ways to listen to and experience our town. Swift One tells the story of a swift who arrives in Margate, explores the sounds, makes a friend, and then feels the pull to return home, leaving the friend behind. The performance blends live music with audio, played through wireless headphones. The binaural recordings replicate how our brains naturally process sound, creating a spatial experience when listened to through headphones. The live music adds another dimension, allowing those without headphones to enjoy part of the story, while listeners with headphones discover a deeper layer.

10 min session repeated six times throughout the day.
Suitable for anyone aged 5+

BOOK HERE

Ink making workshop with artist Lily Prigent

Learn how to make your own inks from natural materials. The workshop will start with a quick exploration and foraging for natural material around Bon Volks studios and Dane Park in Margate.
Then we will prepare the materials using various processes; grinding stones, crushing chalk, squeezing berries, etc. Lily will demonstrate and explain how to make the inks so that you can replicate the process at home. The session will end with experimenting with the inks we have made.

1 x 4h session picking natural materials + making inks
Suitable for all ages
Free workshop (15 places available, please book via the link)
Please let us know your access needs via the booking form.

BOOK HERE