About the Festival
The Festival of Hope is a Coventry community arts festival exploring the theme of hope in a post-pandemic world.
The Knife Angel
Alfie Bradley and the the British Ironworks Centre
Incorporating over 100,000 surrendered knives, The Knife Angel was created to highlight knife crime in our communities, it serves as a strong example of the transformative power of art to speak of hope in dark situations.
The first online stage of the festival took place from September 2021, with a curated website to showcase artistic expressions of hope, mainly from local people, but also from people across the world. We curated contributions from painters, illustrators, sculptors, conceptual artists, photographers, story-tellers, poets, writers, craftspeople, dancers, singers, instrumentalists, bands, songwriters, composers and more. Students, amateur and professional artists were all invited to submit their work.
In addition to the online exhibition, there was a series of events throughout 2021/22 alongside the Coventry City of Culture year. These included things like poetry evenings, holiday clubs, dancing or craft workshops, public exhibitions and more. Check out our events page to see what's on at the Festival of Hope.
We're grateful to our team of talented curators who meet periodically to review submissions to the online exhibition of the Festival of Hope.
