Festival offers dancing seagulls and gravity games

A free international arts festival is being held this weekend on the Lincolnshire coast.

The SO Festival will see performances and events including a "seagull ballet" being staged in Skegness on Friday and Saturday, and in Mablethorpe on Sunday.

Professional artists have been working with local people, including on a play called JOY, which features adults with learning disabilities.

Creative producer Kieran Spiers said: "We have companies and artists from all over the UK and all over Europe coming."

He added: "We've got an entire section of our programme which we've kind of put the badge on called Made in Lincolnshire.

"These are artists that are working in our Lincolnshire county and who are making work quite literally on the doorsteps where people live."

The annual event has been running since 2009. Shows will be staged in streets, parks and other venues.

Highlights will include dancers performing a ballet called Seagull Lake, and a chance to play gravity games based on the work of scientist Sir Isaac Newton, who was born and raised in Lincolnshire.

Spiers said the fact that the festival was free removed a "financial barrier" which often stopped people accessing art.

"By removing a barrier, all people are expected to do with their families and their friends is just to turn up."

Events will run in Skegness from 10:00 to 22:30 BST on Friday and from 10:00 to 18:00 on Saturday, with most around Tower Gardens and the Princes Parade car park.

On Sunday, events in Mablethorpe will run from 10:00 to 17:00 around Queens Park and the Promenade.

Full details of the programme are available on the festival website.