The Southbank Centre has announced the first names of its biennial Unlimited festival, the largest UK festival celebrating the work of disabled artists, working in partnership with the Unlimited Arts commissioning body that supports, funds and promotes new work by disabled artists for UK and international audiences. Featuring a diverse lineup of exciting performances, dance, literature, comedy, music, visual art and more, including free and participatory events, the Unlimited festival runs from Wednesday 4 September until Sunday 8 September in person and with some work available online.
Since its inception in 2012, the festival has been hosted at the Southbank Centre – the only UK venue awarded Platinum accessibility status by the disability advocacy charity Attitude is Everything – and showcases new commissions, bespoke one-off events and existing work. This year features UK and London firsts from well-known established names, alongside works in progress and brand new commissions by artists who identify as disabled, D/deaf, neurodivergent and those experiencing chronic illness and mental health conditions. The festival will close the Southbank Centre’s extensive summer programme, You Belong Here, which explores themes of belonging, identity and community.
Unlimited festival brings together some of the UK’s most forward-thinking artists, exploring the rich tapestry of life from becoming a parent to our approach to disability. Opening the festival, poet Raymond Antrobus shares his new collection Signs, Music – two poetic sequences exploring masculinity, fatherhood, and love (4 Sept, PUR).
Building on the Southbank Centre’s world-class Performance and Dance programme, the festival features a dazzling array of companies and performers interrogating everything from relationships and death to mental illness and social justice. A culmination of Stopgap’s 20-year history, the London premiere of ‘Lived Fiction’ is a dramatic mix of dance and projection art featuring D/deaf, disabled, neurodivergent and non-disabled creatives championing the power of diversity and the human condition (4 Sept, QEH). In the UK premiere of ‘Precarious Moves’, Vienna-based artist and academic Michael Turinsky explores ideas of mobility and mobilisation, from the personal to the collective. Earlier this year, In 2024 he was heralded as an “Outstanding Artist” by the Austrian Ministry of Arts and Culture (6 Sept, QEH).
Reimagining how we choose to engage with music and club culture, Disco Neurotico makes its London debut in the Queen Elizabeth Foyer with a more inclusive clubbing experience that allows you to choose between Hard Dance, Groove and ambient music, alongside gaming and chill-out spaces when you need a break (7 Sept, QEH Foyer). Finally, Touretteshero, led by writer and activist Jess Thom and Matthew Poutney, present the London premiere of ‘Burnt Out In Biscuit Land’ which blends film, live performance, and conversation to create a funny, surreal and moving show on resistance and joy in the face of a crisis (7-8 Sept, RFH Level 5).
Unlimited is an arts commissioning body that supports, funds and promotes new work by disabled artists for UK and international audiences. For further information on the event, please visit the Southbank Centre website
Suzie Lark – Unseen © Suzie Lark; Stopgap’s Lived Fiction © Chris Parkes courtesy of the artist and Southbank Centre
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