Performance Festival 2026

Visitors experienced the storytelling, placemaking and memory-forming power of music and sound. Exploring reverberation, repetition and mythmaking through live performances, screenings, talks, tours and workshops, all inspired by the theme 'echoes’.

Supported by the Colwinston Charitable Trust

Ran from 24 April 2026 to 3 May 2026 at V&A South Kensington

Past events

Shakespeare Trail: All the World's a Stage

Porcelain and Shakespearean Storytelling

NVAP Screening: Rock 'n' Roll

In the Spotlight: Theatre and Performance Gallery Tour

All the World's a Stage: Guided Shakespeare Trail

Friday Late: Lost Queer Venues

The Angry Summer: Puppetry in Motion

Pass the Aux

Hadestown: Music and Mythology

PORTALS: Worlds Made to Explore

Pop-up Performance: Music Memories

South African Cultural Gospel Choir

Open Studios - April

Career Insight: Music and Optimism

Career Insight: Music and Optimism

Sound on Stage

Blues to Bowie, Beatles to Britpop

Create Your Own Cult Music Magazine with British Underground

Resounding Enlightenment

NVAP Screening: The Valley of Astonishment

Collecting Through Time: Echoes in Performance

Instruments of Design

Agatha Christie's Chest of Drawers

NVAP Screening: School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play

Generational Echoes: Clarks, Community and Caribbean Creativity

NVAP Screening: Birdland

Samuel Beckett: Records and Receivers

NVAP Screening: Krapp's Last Tape

Collecting Theatre, Curating Shakespeare

Music in our Everyday

Simon Hale introduces...NVAP Screening: Girl From the North Country

Lost Music Venues: Into the Archive

Shuff & Byng

Jodie Harsh - You Had to Be There

Jodie Harsh - You Had to Be There (Livestream)

TC.KYLIE

DJ with Deaf Rave

'Watch That Man': Discovering the David Bowie Archive

Music Culture with Music Venue Trust

Sweaty Ceilings, Sticky Floors

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