This year, for the first time, the Mayor’s Thames Festival incorporates Nine Elms on the South Bank by extending its core programme to include the area between Lambeth and Chelsea Bridges.
The annual Festival runs for a total of 10 days, celebrating London’s world-famous waterway through a series of artistic spectacles and event. The event stretches from the river’s source right down to the sea, with activity on the river, its bridges and along its banks.
Elements of the festival took place in Nine Elms on the South Bank, with several events highlighting landmark sites in the area. Ildikó Buckley and Jane Palmer’s large-scale YES sculpture presented by Secret Arts popped up in a different location each day during the Festival, celebrating green spaces alongside or near the river.
Destinations included the newly opened Riverside Gardens at the base of One St George Wharf, Nine Elms Lane, and the temporary ‘pop-up’ park next to Battersea Power Station. In addition, experts and storytellers guided walking tours along the Thames, sharing the river’s secrets and past, as well as telling a couple of fantastical stories. Two walks centred around Vauxhall, one lead by author Tom Bolton retracing the submerged River Effra and another by archaeologist Mike Webber which gave an archeologically focused walk which exploring the foreshore of the Thames. White Rabbit’s ‘Are you Sitting Comfortably?’ recounting unknown and fantastical stories about Nine Elms during a walk of the area starting at Embassy Gardens, also a client of The Communication Group plc.
