Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) will host the third edition of Bloom from May 7 to May 16, 2026. This festival provides a unique and intentional platform for innovation, encouraging and supporting artists in the creation of new work that explores experimental forms and ideas. Artists are invited to take risks and produce bold, groundbreaking art.
BAC’s Programme Producer Ella Gamble, who has curated the 2026 programme, told QX, “The UK theatre ecology is quietly losing the spaces where risk happens and mixed-bill nights, scratch platforms, and experimental festivals that once allowed unfinished, formally adventurous work to exist in public are becoming increasingly sparse across the UK. As funding pressures increase, these spaces are often first to be cut, creating a structural bottleneck that limits artistic development, narrows the pipeline of innovation, and reshapes what kinds of work get made.
“These platforms tend to hold what traditional programming struggles to: short-form, in-progress, or uncategorisable work, giving artists room to test ideas, fail productively, and develop new forms in dialogue with audiences.
“The impact is not just artistic but communal: fewer opportunities for connection, collaboration, and shared learning are contributing to a more isolated and less sustainable environment for artists. With Bloom, we’re hoping to gently push back against this”
Dance Me to the End of Love, pink suits.
In an immersive performance titled Dance Me to the End of Love (16 May), the queer punk duo Pink Suits invites audiences to explore themes of intimacy, pain, pleasure, and grief, all set to a soundtrack of Leonard Cohen Live.
Date: 16 May
Time: 2pm and 6pm
Price: Pay What You Can (Recommended Price: £12)
Running Time: 1 hour, 30 mins (no interval)
Age Recommendation: 18+
Access: All performances are Relaxed.
Artist Talk: No Bodies Here: Deleting the Body from Live Performance Ocean Stefan
In No Bodies Here: Deleting the Body from Live Performance, Ocean Stefan presents an artist talk that explores their experiments with performance and examines what occurs to the concept of liveness when bodies are removed, deleted, or obscured. Drawing on their work “The Extinction Trilogy,” a collection of shows that delve into these themes, Ocean will discuss how their experience of transness is central to creating work that engages with ideas of extinction, monsters, and the posthuman. This talk is scheduled for May 16.
Date: 16 May
Time: 4:30pm
Price: Free – booking required
Running Time: 1 hour (no interval)
Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, London SW11 5TN, United Kingdom.
