Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to host Liberty Festival

The Mayor of London's Liberty Festival, the UK's biggest showcase of disabled artists and performers, is to be staged in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park for the first time as part of National Paralympic Day celebrations on 7 September.

Miracoco Luminarium will feature at Liberty Festival
Miracoco Luminarium will feature at Liberty Festival

Organised by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, the British Paralympics Association and the London Legacy Development Corporation, National Paralympic Day, which includes the Liberty Festival, is a free event marking the end of celebrations for the first anniversary of the London 2012 Games. 

Aimed at disabled and non-disabled people, it will take place exactly ten years after the first Liberty Festival in Trafalgar Square on 7 September 2003. 

It will be compered by Mat Fraser, star of Channel 4's Cast Offs, and John Kelly, who is lead vocalist for the musical Reasons to be Cheerful.

This year's line-up also features disabled artists and companies, as well as music, film, installations, DJs and children's activities.

Highlights will include The Limbless Knight – A Tale of Rights Reignited - an aerial outdoor production from theatre company Graeae, and live performances by Andrea Begley who won BBC One's The Voice this year, as well as opera singer Denise Leigh, who performed at the Paralympic opening ceremony. The Miracoco Luminarium light scuplture will also be present.

Bradley Hemmings, co-artistic director of last year's Paralympic opening ceremony, said: "One of the things that last year's Paralympic opening ceremony achieved was a major Arts Council-funded training programme in circus for deaf and disabled performers and one year on National Paralympic Day offers a fantastic opportunity to see some of these extraordinary performers once again in Graeae's new outdoor production."

Boris Johnson, who is backing the festival, added: "This event will be a fitting finale to another outstanding summer of sport, culture and entertainment in this magnificent new park. 

"Liberty has been enormously influential as well as popular over the years and it's an opportunity to enjoy magical performances by some of the finest disabled artists in the UK. It's also another chance to enjoy our fabulous new park."

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