About The Festival

The 2015 Festival had over 17,000 visitors, The 2016 festival will take place from Saturday 11th June to Thursday 30th June.

Welcome to the 22ND Positive Images Festival taking place in June 2016. The Festival is entirely managed and organised by volunteers and all organisations affiliated to the Festival whether voluntary, cultural, educational, health related, statutory or faith related work under the umbrella of Positive Images. The Festival would not exist without its volunteers and again as in recent years the work of student volunteers from Coventry University and Culturae Mundi is integral to the three week celebration of diversity in the city. We thank all the volunteers for their great enthusiasm and support.
Positive Images was founded to celebrate the amazing heritage of and cultural traditions of the city’s mainstream and minority communities and now also embraces diversity in all its forms.
This year the festival will be launched at 12.00 noon on Saturday 11th June by the Lord Mayor of Coventry, Lindsley Harvard, and the city’s own Lady Godiva, Pru Porretta.
For the second year the Festival is supported by the city council’s Fostering and Adoption Service. “Coventry City Council urgently needs more foster carers and adopters for Coventry children and we are delighted to have had the opportunity to work with the Positive Images Team again this year to promote fostering and adoption for Coventry. We hope you are looking forward to this year’s fantastic festival programme as much as we are,” commented Rachel Brown, Fostering and Adoption Recruitment Development Officer. 
Thank you to our funders Awards for All and the Arts Council England.

The Festival is strongly supported by Hillz FM Community Radio, who will be conducting interviews and gathering the views of local people attending Positive Images, which will be heard on the city’s air waves through 98.6fm. Share your views by calling the studio on 02476 224 761 or email [email protected]. Listen to Hillz FM on 98.6FM or online at www.hillzfm.co.uk
We hope you enjoy this year’s Festival and support the organisers, partner communities, partner organisations and the artists by coming along to the many events and activities that form this year’s programme.
It is hard to believe that the Festival launched in 1995 as a one day Multicultural Book Fair has grown to a three week festival, supported by 70 community organisations and communities covering music, dance, drama, workshops, public meetings, poetry, literature and storytelling and so much more. Also 21 years ago, the Festival was graced by a young black dub poet - Benjamin Zephaniah - we wonder what happened to him.

The Festival was founded to celebrate the amazing heritage and traditions of the city’s minority and mainstream communities but it also now embraces diversity in all its forms. People and organisations representing communities, faiths and other forms of diversity will be leading, taking part in, and performing in the Festival. Positive Images Festival embraces diversity in all its forms and supports local artists, writers, dancers, musicians, poets as well as sourcing all its publicity, equipment and supplies from Coventry. This makes Positive Images a truly Coventry based Festival.

We hope you enjoy last  year’s Festival  please read the report to find out what happened.

Colin Scott, Chair