Shared moments, stronger communities

The Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF) is London’s largest and longest-established festival of free outdoor theatre and performing arts. We started in 1996, and I think people know us for the unusually staged events we produce. We try to pop up everywhere – town centres, piazzas, squares. It could be a waterfront or a beach: we’ve done lots of things on and in the water.     

One of the things that people come away from the festival with is a sense of awe and surprise. We also commission productions that help us to think about more challenging subjects. Everything we present reflects the unfolding story of Greenwich and East London.    

I’ve been here for the whole time, and when you stood in Cutty Sark Gardens, you’d only see the one tower at Canary Wharf. That’s all that was there. There was no DLR, no Tube and no way of getting across the river. We take it for granted now that we can jump on the Elizabeth or Jubilee line here and move all over London. In 1996, Greenwich Peninsula was still a vacant site. So over those 30 years, the festival has mirrored and been shaped by the unfolding landscape of this area – for example, one of our flagship events this year, Dancing City, is set to take place in Eastbank, Newham’s stunning, newly opened cultural quarter.        

We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next 10 years, but that doesn’t scare us. This has never been a more important time for the arts, freedom of thought and artistic responses to political issues. In 2020, we were the first major public event to take place in the pandemic, and after the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, local writer Roy Williams created an audio play called 846 Live. In 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine, we produced a piece that projected images of 56 Ukrainian murals from the 1960s and 70s onto the Old Royal Naval College’s building (many of these murals had already been destroyed by the time we showed them).

These are difficult times for many communities both here in the UK and around the world. As a free outdoor festival, we recognise the important role GDIF plays in creating shared moments of community and optimism, which can act as an antidote to division and hate. That spirit of togetherness and joy will be at the heart of GDIF 2025. When the full line-up is revealed, audiences will discover a celebratory programme that will spark wonder and joy – a much-needed remedy in these uncertain times.          

The Guardian said we make an “unrivalled contribution to the happiness of the people of London”. We’re very proud of that quote. I think it’s because people come to these free events and they’re completely relaxed. You can chat to your mates or family, but you’re also aware of other people in the crowd, and I think people love experiencing things like this together. Thirty years ago, having a drink or a meal outside on a pavement cafe was really hard to come by. Now we’ve got a huge taste for these European-style spaces – putting culture and joy into public spaces. Like Greenwich Peninsula, where it’s about street food and people enjoying their leisure time. Where it’s also about the beautiful waterfront paths and a sense of access and enjoyment of these different views and vistas (like from our office in Design District, which we all love).    

 We have to feel that there’s somebody there holding our hand who wants this to happen, who believes in the power of that kind of magic and transformation. So putting culture and joy into public spaces is what it’s all about – a place where people can see art and different experiences in the most positive way. That’s why the festival has been so resilient – you have people who encounter the festival here by chance, and they have the most amazing experience.       

We think a lot about people. We did an event in Thamesmead in 2022 called Follow Me, during the pandemic, and it was a piece of Belgian circus theatre from a company called Be Flat. We were all given a stool and had to follow along with it. At one point, it was a musical instrument, then we sat on it, then we did the conga – it was hilarious. There was one dad with his three-year-old lad there in an absolute trance. It turned out it was their second day living in that estate, and you just thought, well, how amazing that this little boy will have seen everybody out on the street playing, adults and children, with extraordinary feats of parkour and acrobatics. It makes people realise they live in a special place. I think that’s very important – that we all feel special.

Five GDIF moments that stopped London in its tracks

1. Opening night at The Old Naval College, 1997

In 1997, we partnered with Barcelona and created a programme of Spanish and Catalan dance in the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College. It doesn’t sound radical now, but in 1997, the navy was still there and no one really knew what was behind the gates. Its last commander, Johnnie Maughan, gave us permission to run the event in the grounds. It felt a bit like the storming of the Winter Palace because people went in there for the first time and saw these amazing spaces. I was very proud of that.

2. Island of Foam at The Tide, 2022

We were hugely inspired by the imagination behind The Tide, an amazing architectural feature at Greenwich Peninsula. So, in 2022, German artist Stephanie Lüning created a piece called Island of Foam, in which she live-painted rainbow foam down the steps into Peninsula Square. It was an act of great and wondrous joy, and you’ll never be able to think of that stairway up to The Tide in quite the same way again.

3. Resurgam at St Paul’s Cathedral, 2023

Ellie, our executive producer, has the job of making the impossible happen. In 2023, we produced and commissioned an aerial event on St Paul’s Cathedral – on its southern face opposite the Tate – with Bandaloop, a vertical dance company. We had to stop the traffic, but even more difficult than that was changing the scheduling of organ and choir practice.

4. The Architect across South-East London, 2023

This was an immersive piece of theatre by incredible local writers Mojisola Adebayo, Roy Williams and Matthew Xia, and local actors. We were going into the 30th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a tragic part of history for this area, the impact of which continues to ripple, but we wanted to do a piece that was optimistic: a bus journey that looked at hopeful futures and possibilities for Black people here. As the bus drove down Well Hall Road, past the Stephen Lawrence Memorial, there was a flank of local runners who ran beside the bus as a sort of guard of honour. Stephen was a keen long-distance runner and had run with the Cambridge Harriers. It was emotionally stunning and a beautifully realised piece, incredibly complex in terms of the stage management – changing actors at bus stops, for example. It was something to be really proud of.

5. Life Lines at Greenwich Peninsula, 2024

Just last summer, we presented a production here called Life Lines, where five parkour acrobat dancers traversed the roof above the NOW Gallery and then came down and took over the different spaces in Peninsula Square before winding their way across to the viewing platform at 33, an installation by Studio Weave in Central Park. It was just such an epic act of heroism – what they do is incredibly difficult – but they make it look so effortless. It was really uplifting and showcased all the incredible architecture here in the Design District and at Greenwich Peninsula.

GDIF runs 22 August–6 September and will be at Greenwich Peninsula 30–31 August – visit festival.org/gdif-2025 for the full line-up this summer