LONDON.- This June, InTRANSIT will once again take over the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea with its exciting and experimental programme of site-responsive art and performance. With this year’s theme of ‘Island Life’, InTRANSIT brings together responses from a diverse selection of artists looking at the contrasts of urban isolation and connectivity, celebrating community and the principle that ‘no man is an island’.

Pop-up ‘Island’ installations create an arts-archipelago across the borough, with the Portobello Pavilion - InTRANSIT's hub of practical activity and discussion – at its centre. Highlights include: a series of large-scale, playful sandcastles produced in conjunction with the Museum of Architecture; an immersive exploration of JG Ballard's novel Concrete Island; an electro-folk opera at the Print Room; an art exhibition in a secret subterranean space at Notting Hill Gate station; and a day of dance and participation from Polynesia and Melanesia.

Curated and produced by O’Neill/Ross, InTRANSIT champions work that is immediate and relevant. It is unique in London in that it exclusively commissions new art of every genre in unexpected locations. An innovative platform for experimentation and new collaborations in art and performance, InTRANSIT celebrates space and challenges the role of audiences by responding to current issues and putting local residents at the heart of arts commissioning. Across the cultural sector there has been a real move towards connectivity and engagement and, InTRANSIT, as a commissioning showcase, is part of this new wave of activities committed to widening participation and access.

Curators O’Neill/Ross comment, InTRANSIT and the Portobello Pavilion have the power to make creativity a part of the every-day landscape - something both inspiring and accessible. Across the cultural sector there has been a real move towards connectivity and engagement, with InTRANSIT’s core of outdoor and site-specific practice consistently involving a high proportion of younger audiences. This is our fourth year at the helm of InTRANSIT, and we look forward with eager anticipation to an ambitious summer of giant sandcastles, mass vocal projects, pulsating motorway art, and three weeks of non-stop creative activities.

Councilor Timothy Coleridge, Cabinet Member for Planning Policy, Transport and Arts comments, InTRANSIT continues to be ambitious in animating the places and spaces of the Royal Borough with the highest quality art and performance. This year promises something for everyone, from intimate pop-up performances by local choirs to the spectacle of giant sandcastles, located as playful presents linking some of the borough's prime cultural attractions. I am delighted that the Portobello Pavilion is positioned once again at the heart of the festival, offering artist-led workshops and a series of talks and debates. InTRANSIT offers unforgettable experiences, giving residents and visitors alike the opportunity to discover the unfamiliar in familiar places across Kensington and Chelsea. As ever, many of the events in the festival programme are free. Do come along with your friends and family, and live the experience for yourselves!

InTRANSIT 2017 highlights include:

Portobello Pavilion – Friday 9th June to Sunday 25th June, Powis Square, W11
A striking temporary structure situated in historic Powis Square, the Portobello Pavilion offers a serene landing place within the wider context of the programme. The Pavilion is host to a series of free practical workshops and lectures focusing on community engagement and experimentation. In homage to this year’s theme, the Pavilion will take the appearance of a small wooded island rising from the tarmac, involving the community in an ambitious and innovative build process.

Sandcastles – Friday 9th June to Friday 23rd June, various locations
The Museum of Architecture presents a series of large-scale sandcastles, each up to 2.5 metres tall, designed by leading UK architects. Located outside the Design Museum, in Duke of York Square, and at Portobello Market, these iconic structures will unite InTRANSIT’s ‘Island Life’ with the London Festival of Architecture's theme of 'Memory'. The installations are playful, engaging, and unexpected – they will both shock and excite, startling people as they walk through streets they think they know. The sandcastle installations are accompanied by exhibitions and discussions on 'Beach Architecture' as well as practical workshops for all the family.

Concrete Island – From Thursday 15th June
Charlie Warde returns JG Ballard's classic novel Concrete Island to its site of origin in this immersive adaptation. Our protagonist, Robert Maitland, a contemporary Robinson Crusoe, plunges through the matrix of modern life and becomes marooned on a section of wasteland earmarked for development under London’s busiest road. With meagre supplies and bizarre encounters he exerts his will over the confines of his dominion in a transgressive and transformative act of self-discovery. Warde’s installation, set on the actual site of the book, and built by Warde in the exact timeframe of the novel, focuses on themes of connectivity, isolation and transformation within contemporary urban life, and the ultimate taming of the environment. The project includes a trail of work by artists from Kindred Studios.

Escape Artists – Friday 9th June to Wednesday 14th June
Collaborating with course directors and emerging artists from Central St Martin’s, Royal College of Music and the Cass School of Art, Escape Artists uses the issue of decreasing academic space as an opportunity for established colleges to break with tradition and take their practice off-site. Responding to InTRANSIT’s theme of ‘Island Life’, students will present new work in a decommissioned police station located in the heart of Chelsea.

Remnants – From Monday 12th June
Performed by four singers and dancers, Remnants is an electro-folk opera, re-arranging traditional Balkan vocal music and combining it with contemporary electronics. This piece of modern music theatre follows one woman’s encounter with the aftermath of war crimes at Srebrenica, and her family’s connection to the Holocaust in Bosnia fifty years before. This production by Opera Erratica production is coupled with an art exhibition by Sejla Kameric, in atmospheric, bunker-like rooms at Notting Hill Gate tube station.

Airborne – Friday 16th June to Sunday 18th June, various locations
Award-winning composer and artist Verity Standen will work with groups of local singers to surprise and enchant audiences with a series of pop-up performances in a variety of locations. Listen out for voices on the wind! Airborne will work with performers from Kensington and Chelsea’s ‘Sing to Live, Live to Sing’ and Royal Brompton Hospital’s ‘Singing for Breathing’ choirs.

Mr Danger – Friday 9th June to Saturday 17th June
Following a recent mishap that has eroded his self-confidence and written off his motorcycle, fallen daredevil Mr Danger searches for redemption, meaning, and alternate means of transportation. Danger’s ‘Self-Recovery Safe Stunt Strategy’ will see him performing a series of decidedly underwhelming feats. His tour of the borough will culminate in Tavistock Square where, for one day only, the traders of Portobello and Golborne markets will be “selling danger”. Mr Danger is the creation of comedian Sam Quinn.

Message In A Bottle – Wednesday 14th June to Saturday 24th June
This installation of sound and film by artist Kate Hughes allows audiences to experience the parallel existence of cystic fibrosis patients isolated from one another in hospital. In response to this, the public are invited to write a message in a bottle which will be anonymously tweeted and added to the Island Collaborations’ blog. Hughes engages the patients of Royal Brompton Hospital’s respiratory ward to collate audio and photographic evidence of what place and sound means to them while in hospital.

Pacifica – Saturday 24th June
A day of dance and participation from the Pacific Islands, led by indigenous cultures of the Polynesian and Melanesian Isles. InTRANSIT teams up with Bordercrossings and Origins Festival of First Nations to bring the beauty and magic of the Polynesian Isles to Emslie Horniman’s Pleasance gardens in north Kensington.