Kirkleatham spent the weekend as an outdoor stage when Between the Tides returned on 22 and 23 August with circus, dance, puppetry, music and a generous amount of organised mess.
The free festival spread across Kirkleatham Museum, the historic village and the Walled Garden. Families could move between performance, workshops, playful installations, walkabout acts and the Pick and Mix street-food market, with the two main sites about a five-minute walk apart.
Circus in the air and water on the ground
The programme ranged from small comic encounters to large visual work. Tit for Tat brought juggling and theatrical circus in Disorder of Knights. Autin Dance’s Up in the Sky put six performers on a seven-metre circular structure for an aerial story about adventure, belonging and home.
Artizani’s Hydro Punk turned pipes, pumps, taps and leaks into a chaotic water machine full of games and puzzles. The Ugly Bug Wingding created a miniature world of insects on their way to a party, while Architects of Air returned with its walk-through Luminarium of coloured light and inflatable chambers.
Elsewhere, visitors could join a silent woodland disco, borrow costumes for a forest takeover or finish with the foam-filled Big Bubble Bash. The mix is part of the festival’s identity: high-quality touring work presented without a theatre door or a ticket price in the way.
A bigger place for young people
The 2026 programme added a separate Teen Takeover on 18 August, bringing pop-up performance and creative activity to Redcar High Street before the main weekend. That extension gave older young people their own point of entry rather than treating the whole event as a programme only for small children.
Between the Tides was named Best Event of the Year at the previous North East Culture Awards. This year’s edition kept the family focus while making broader use of Kirkleatham and widening the activity around the festival weekend.
Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council programmes and produces the event with financial support from Arts Council England. It is also part of Without Walls, a national network that brings outdoor arts to towns and cities.
Free bus links ran from Redcar town centre, with child travel free and adult fares capped, while cycle parking and accessible facilities were provided on site. Those practical details matter at a free event: removing the ticket cost only works if people can also and use the venue.
: Dates, programme and access information were checked against the official Between the Tides 2026 page. Image: Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council.