Arts organisation Fierce is to stage two major events as part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival: Key to the City and The Healing Gardens of Bab.
Aaron Wright, artistic director of Fierce, said, “we’re ecstatic to celebrate our 25th anniversary in true Fierce style with our biggest year of projects and events to date.
“The investment from Birmingham 2022 Festival is a major stamp of approval in the radical, risk-taking work that sits at the heart of everything Fierce does. We will continue to bring challenge and hold space for complex conversations about commonwealth, colonisation and Birmingham's role within this.
“With our truly international perspective, we’re looking forward to welcoming artists from all six habited continents to the West Midlands for projects spanning Birmingham, Solihull, Coventry and Wolverhampton. While we wouldn't want everybody to like everything we do, we're confident there'll be something you’ve never seen before.”
Key to the City by Paul Ramírez Jonas will be staged at locations across Birmingham and Solihull from 28 May until 7 August. Anyone will be able to award a key to the city to whomever they want for whatever reason they want. For a limited time, a minimum of 12,000 key holders will be able to explore “private, hidden, secret and intriguing places and spaces that are usually inaccessible to the public and that will bring a new perspective to the city”.
The Healing Gardens of Bab will be staged in Chamberlain Square, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Symphony Hall and other city locations from 27 June until 17 July. The gardens are “a space to reflect on the violent erasure enforced by the British Empire, and a space to celebrate the many sexual identities that are not translatable into English”.
One of the first events confirmed for the Fierce Festival from 10 until 16 October is The Making of Pinocchio by Cade and MacAskill, a new trans version of the famous tale.