Changeling Theatre opens the festival
For 11 days between 7th and 17th July, the multi-arts festival, JAM on the Marsh, takes place in the unique landscape of Romney Marsh.
The festival invites people to get up close to world-class events, including music, theatre, sculpture, art and poetry. Tickets are now on sale at www.jamconcert.org
JAM on the Marsh’s 9th festival crosses the Marsh from Hythe to Dungeness and Snargate to New Romney. Every one of the famous Marsh churches will be used in the festival, bringing unmissable events to these unspoilt wonders, as well as the Marsh Academy Leisure Centre and Cinemarsh.
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Michael Collins
On 7th July, Changeling Theatre opens the festival with their brand new, hysterical and irreverent production of Oscar Wilde’s ever popular The Importance of Being Earnest. This bold, imaginative and magical open air theatre company returns to the heart of New Romney, performing in the Old School Garden, where the church and town become the play’s sets.
Music has been at the heart of every festival since 2014, and this year is no different. Concerts come thick and fast, featuring some world-famous names: VOCES8; Lucy Crowe and James Gilchrist; Michael Collins with the London Mozart Players; the Holst Singers and the London Tango Quintet.
Many stars will visit the festival over 11 days, though not all the stars are famous; local talent is given a blast when the Ashford Youth Jazz Orchestra gets the toes tapping, and a few days later 60 children from St Nicholas and Brookland Primary Schools come together to perform with one of the UK’s finest brass groups, Onyx Brass. Conducted by Lydd resident Rebecca Lodge Birkebaek, the children will sing Timothy Jackson’s Opening Night.
Visual art is represented in 6 exhibitions, including a community project designed by Yolanda Houston of New Romney’s Teach Me, where a mosaic has been created for each of the 14 Marsh churches.
These wonderful pieces of art, made by the Marsh community, will be on display as a Romney Marsh Churches’ Mosaics Trail. Other examples to see include Angela C Smith’s breath-taking sculptures in the transept of St. Leonard’s Church, Hythe and fabulous abstract oils, by Littlestone artist John Ballard, filling St George’s, Ivychurch.