Watergate Bay’s shoreline will set the scene for a free weekend celebration of creativity, community, imagination and ocean culture.  

The Watergate Bay Hotel team is staging Arts on the Beach, which will be two days of sea-themed, sustainably-minded festivities for the whole family on Saturday, September 9 and Sunday, September 10. 

Mirroring the many moods of the ocean, the line-up will ebb and flow against its dramatic backdrop from a lively programme of dance troupes, aerial performance, live music and interactive theatre, to getting hands-on with bubble bikes, lantern and willow building, sea-themed arts, crafts and dancing workshops.  

There will be plenty of food and drink from Watergate Bay’s beach food partners to feed imaginations and keep everyone fuelled for the weekend.  

 Beachgoers can watch Out of the Deep Blue, a 13-foot sea giant puppetry and dance performance, brought to life by the Johnny Autin Dance Company. 

The dance and parkour company Prodigal UPG will bring ocean conservation issues to the fore with its show On the Strandline, inspiring hearts and minds of every age to do everything they can to protect marine environments.  Sea shanties will echo from the cliffs, before sunset revellers throw shapes on the shore as part of one of the UK’s largest silent discos.  

Will Ashworth, Watergate Bay Hotel founder and executive director, said: “We’ve always loved creating inclusive events on the beach for our wider community, as well as visitors. Being able to provide this exciting new event for people to come along to for free means everyone can be part of something special.”  

 Arts on the Beach builds on Watergate Bay’s long heritage of curating accessible, engaging events for the local community. In 2004, the Road to the Beach participatory dance project culminated in a one-day performance, The Edge, which saw a cast of 700 – including professional dancers and local schoolchildren – lead an audience of 2,500 from one end of the beach to the other before its finale of four dancers and four JCB diggers ‘dancing’ on the sand.  

 Polo on the Beach started in 2007 with a massive leap of faith, turning the shoreline into an arena for the UK’s first ever polo match on a beach – evolving to a three-day free festival of 10,000 people by 2017. And choreographer Simon Birch’s Shoreline – part of the SALT landscape dance festival in 2016 – created stirring scenes as five dancers performed to live choral music sung by Cornish community singers.  

The Watergate Bay Hotel team is excited to bring people together again for a new chapter of imaginative events on the beach after the pandemic hiatus.  

Johnny Autin, the artistic director of Autin Dance Theatre, said: “We’re thrilled to be bringing our sensational outdoor performance Out of the Deep Blue to Newquay as part of this exciting new arts festival. We can’t wait for Eko (our sea giant) to meet new audiences in Cornwall, and for him and little Violet to share their stories with the children and their families in the audience.”  

 The Hall for Cornwall Youth Dance company will be performing DAWN choreography by Rob Mennear on the Saturday.  

Helen Tiplady, deputy creative director, said: “We’re delighted to be part of this exciting weekend. What a brilliant way to celebrate the outdoors, the beach and environment with performance and a gathering of our creative community. Showcasing young performers at events like this creates lifelong memories and inspires young people to go into the creative industries.”