Perhaps there’s never been a better time to celebrate global cultures and the many different communities that call the island their home than now.

This weekend sees the return of the ’Our Island, Our World’ festival a day-long carnival of music, arts and cultural celebration, which takes place in the grounds of Peel Cathedral and the Corrin Hall, this Saturday, with one of the main attractions of the afternoon being the creation of a junk percussion orchestra.

The festival will be split into two parts, with the main event being the free family day, followed by a concert at the Peel Centenary Centre the same evening.

The family day kicks off at midday and features a dizzying array of events and activities, designed to reflect the global reach of the island’s communities.

The art and culture activities take place in the Corrin Hall and will feature a mock bedouin tent which will house crafts and workshops in Chinese calligraphy and paper art, lantern making, global story telling and Viking-inspired weaving, together with a global cafe.

The performances take place from 1pm in the Peel Cathedral and will feature music from the Ellan Vannin pipes, the Fecktones, Clash Vooar, Loose Crew and the return of the Manx Bulgarian project, featuring the Bulgarian piper and singer Vlad Stevanov and Ivelina Stevanov along with Manx musicians David Kilgallon and Paul Rogers.

There will also be dance performances from Skeddan Jiarg, The Sharon Rye Irish dancers and Rhythm of Bulgaria, along with Indian dancing from Gwenael LaSirene and Chinese classical dance by Rita Zhu and Ling Ren.

However, the noisiest workshop will take place at 3pm, in the Athol Room at the Peel Centenary, when musicians Katie Lawrence, Aalin Clague, Martyn Thomas and Danny Kneale will lead a group of children through a music session where the only instruments will be drums, chimes and other percussion instruments made from beach junk.

The brainchild of John Shakespeare and Beach Buddies founder Bill Dale, along with festival organiser Dave Mclean, the workshop will see kids having a go at making music from rubbish that has been picked up around the island’s coastline, such as plastic barrels and containers, metal tubing and other rubbish.

’The plan with this workshop is to try and encourage young children to think about all the rubbish that gets collected on the beach,’ said Dave. ’We will have a few things here and we’ll try to make instruments out of all the stuff and bits of rubbish that Bill has collected from the beaches.

’It is a bit of ecology and a bit of fun at the same time.’

The festival, like every other island-based activity this year, has had to be modified and adapted to cope with the social restrictions.

Having pulled the plug on the festival in the wake of the coronavirus earlier this year, Dave decided to re-invent the OIOW festival at short notice.

Being unable to invite the usual line up of top international talent, he created a global festival using Manx artists, which pays tribute to the truly global nature of the island’s community.

’Obviously this year we had to change it,’ said Dave.

’We couldn’t get any bands from across but we decided that we wanted to go ahead anyway and, as there is plenty of talent in the island, it shouldn’t be difficult to make a day out of it.

’In actual fact we ended up being oversubscribed with people. We have plenty of stuff on. What I didn’t want was to have a pale imitation of the previous couple of years. I wanted it to feel fresh and exciting.

’I tried to think of something that would put a spark of something different into the day and once we had the mad idea of building a bedouin tent in the Hall, a lot of other ideas came along.

’For the last couple of years, I think we have built up an interesting event that is part of the Manx cultural scene and unless I could have made it into something that was completely worthwhile doing, I would have rather not bothered at all.

’As it is I am really excited for the weekend.’

More information on the ’OIOW 2020’ Facebook page.

by Mike Wade

Twitter:@iomnewspaper