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Brought to Life by the Community
Festival31 (F31) is Merseyside’s arts festival for celebration of under-represented artists. The festival provides opportunities for engagement with and between communities, focusing on highlighting experiences of displacement, forced migration, and resettlement. The programme offers counter-narratives to negative rhetoric on migration through arts activism and grassroots community creativity. Festival31 also commissions new work from artists who are or have sought sanctuary on Merseyside.
Powered by Community, Driven by Purpose
Festival31 is a community-owned celebration of dialogue, change, and solidarity with displaced and resettled people — not just a festival, but a movement shaped by care, creativity, and connection.
Adele Spiers
Managing Director and Clinical Lead at SOLA Arts
A hub of artistic talent
Festival31 is a hub for artists and creative individuals from displaced backgrounds, bringing together and showcasing their work and providing outlets for their skills. The programme also provides opportunities for emerging artists, who benefit from a platform through which to develop their creative lives.
F31: 2025 – time out for Research & Development
After ten years of Festival31, 2025 was a time to pause, reflect & plan. We have created a 5 year vision including artists residencies, events, exhibitions, collaborations and more.
Previous festival collaborations, including exhibitions with Tate Liverpool and partnerships with various community organisations, have strengthened our mission, and we are thankful for the support from agencies like Heart of Glass, Africa Oye and Culture Liverpool to support our programming and moving forward.
We are always seeking new collaborators, individuals & organisations, to explore how we can better engage with narratives of displacement and resettlement through the arts and throughout the Liverpool City Region.
in 2025 we commissioned six artists — three established artists from the UK and three emerging artists of displaced backgrounds — to collaborate on artworks that explore narratives of displacement. Their work will be created and produced in the coming months and support the creation of engagement activity for communities across the region.
Artists Without Borders is our network and resource for supporting creative talents across the communities. Click here to find out more.
Our Youth Voices strand empowers young people with lived experiences to share their stories and peer foster understanding of displacement and resettlement from young people’s experience. We appreciate the continued support from MPAC, Our Liverpool, the National Lottery, and other funders who are supporting this new opportunity.
Check our calendar page for details on upcoming events.
Why is F31 needed?
We:
- Open conversations about forced displacement and settlement while challenging stereotypes.
- Believe that arts and culture can play a fundamental role in exploring these themes in an honest, open and approachable way
- Help to create emotional connections to the stories being shared and providing opportunity for talents to be recognised.
- Showcase the incredible talents of individuals eager to share their artistic skills while collaborating with other UK artists.
- Provide representation for displaced artists and makers, offering a welcoming space for these artists, giving a space to self-express and reconnect with their creative identities whilst enriching arts, cultural, creative industries and enabling connection and community.
We all benefit from Festival31! To find out more email us; contact@festival31.co.uk
