Riverside Festival shines in the drizzle as DMU's Cultural eXchanges celebrates 25 years

Last weekend saw the local community flock to our campus and the River Soar for two days of arts, culture and community. 

Rain didn’t spoil the fun as Leicester’s biggest arts festival – the Riverside Festival – returned with a schedule bursting with performance, food and river-based activities. 

Local music acts took to the Main Stage in Bede Park, and Western Boulevard was packed with street food sellers and local makers. Along the River Soar, visitors enjoyed kayaking, boat trips and the return of the Dragon Boat Race, as Castle Gardens and The Newarke hosted poetry, busking, public art and vintage buses. 

At the same time, thousands of visitors explored DMU’s campus as the university hosted its Cultural eXchanges festival, a programme of creative workshops, storytelling, live performances and interactive art. 

Students take centre stage with Cultural eXchanges 

Since 2001, DMU the university has celebrated diversity within the arts through Cultural eXchanges. The festival is organised by DMU students studying Arts and Festivals Management.  

While DMU has always been at the heart of Riverside Festival, until last year Cultural eXchanges had been held a separate event.  

This year, the lineup featured hip-hop / bhangra collective Mirchi Mob (pictured) who headlined Saturday’s show, alongside a host of other musicians, with room in the schedule for creative writing presentations and dance companies too. 

We caught up with students Mya (left) and Kieghan (right), who were behind much of the Cultural eXchanges action, and asked them how the festival came together and how the skills they’ve learnt will benefit them after university.

Mya said: “There were ten of us on the module this year, and we were split into three sections - the marketing team, the operations team, and the administration team. I’ve been leading the marketing team, which has meant posting on Instagram, collabing with Leicester City Council's social media team, DMU's Instagram team, and creating merch like badges and lollipops, just trying to get the word out.” 

Kieghan said: “I'm the head of administration, so my role has been mostly about artist liaisons, dealing with contracts,things like that., and linking with other students too. 

“We've been working with Music Technology students, and our photographer is studying photography at DMU, so the festival has brought people with lots of different skills together.” 

Mya said: “We also have volunteers from the younger years in our course, who are getting hands-on knowledge about what they could be doing in their third year, which has been really good.  

“Cultural eXchanges has wrapped up everything  we've learned over the three years. Doing this actually means you can put it all into practice, so if we’re applying for jobs that are similar, we know we have the experience to actually do the job.” 

Kieghan added: “This module has been a real highlight of the course. It’s been great to watch it all come together, because we’ve been organising it since October last year. I remember the ten of us sitting in a boardroom, spitting names and ideas out, and seeing it all come to fruition in less than a year has been really nice – it makes me feel really emotional to see it.”

Dr Jacqui Norton, Associate Professor, Arts and Festivals Management, said: “It is an amazing experience for the students and it was great to see how they put their learning into practice over the weekend. We have received some great feedback from members of the public and the performers have said how professional our students and set-up was – from arrival, green room to the tech and performance itself! I am really proud of them all.”