Ten things I love about you, I Am Festival

29 April 2025

I for

Your Invitation to every Individual from the mission days of ‘ANDinclusive’ (catchy!) to the full-on fever of ‘I Am’. Come as you are.

A for

Your Access all areas (including the organisation that bears that name) from lifts and loos and logistics towards the artists and activists we needed to be, making an unscheduled stop in 2017 at the Louise Bourgeois Room at Tate where school smuggled in its own spider and challenged the public to choose the one they liked more.

M for how

You like to Move it! Move it! It seems like we were always dancing: spontaneous Bauhaus Ballet with floor-tile headwear, the elastic-fantastic Blink Dance, the charismatic characters of Corali and the online icandance parties that Covid couldn’t stop.

F for

Your five hundred cardboard boxes doused in Flambar, the unity flag, the freestyle frenzy, Flute Theatre’s Pericles for one family at a time, festival assistants and a school’s Franz West tribute in the inflatable igloo. ‘It is pink and it is gorgeous,’ they sang to their virus-molecule-shaped sculpture. It was pink. And it was gorgeous.

E because

You started with Exchange. Tate Exchange. Level 5: a place for work in progress, for dialogues, for meetings. Each year a new theme, a new artist and a new journey. Love was the Tate Exchange theme for the March 2020 festival and we know what happened then. So, we exchanged letters and care packages and all our creative ideas.

S when

You gave us Sonic the octopus, sensory tentacles and a song that called and responded to Make some Noise. Secret missions in a royal palace and games on the lawns. SLiDE-ing into SoDaDa (more dancing: think club vibes). And, of course, the vital component every year: SCHOOLS and all who sail in them.

T for

Tate and the very first non-verbal ten-minute talk. Treading on the sands of the pop-up beach of Tropicália by Hélio Oiticica. Three students, a gallery curator, Tate staff on their day off and assorted family members. True…

I for

…innovation! Can I also mention the inflatable igloo here? Indispensable for all festivals.

V for

Your virtual festival.

Actually, I didn’t love that so much… It worked when nothing else could, but it was hard. How about ‘We are Backdrop at The Vale’, the soundtrack to many a festival? They gave us the original Tate mosh pit and the Unity Song. ‘Turn down the volume!’ came the cry when they were in the house. They never did.

A for

Your Ambassadors of the Cultural kind. They brought us Fabulous Flowers, Move and Groove, the Time Capsule, the SOS dance… I’m going through all the letters again. In masterclasses, weekly group sessions and at the festival, the Cultural Ambassadors – alumni and current – sparkled and shone.

and L

To thing number ten. Come on, who’s really counting? It’s love (actually). And seriously. Whatever the year, whatever the theme, the I Am festival has always been about the love that extends possibilities, the love that demands our best efforts and the love that leads to change.