Announcement made on this year's popular Arts Fresco event in Harborough

Busy scenes during the Arts Fresco event. PICTURE: ANDREW CARPENTER

A popular Market Harborough street theatre festival is to be held online this month amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The dynamic Arts Fresco show – which attracted huge crowds of over 10,000 people last year - is to go ahead virtually on Sunday September 13.

The annual one-day event is one of the biggest, free street celebrations in the UK.

It is traditionally staged every September around the streets of Market Harborough.

But due to coronavirus restrictions, this year’s festival will be pre-recorded and broadcast via YouTube.

A selection of performances from socially-distanced Edmund and Hillary, The Covid Police, Team BGees and HMS Punnafore will be filmed before the spectacular in a Covid-secure manner around the town.

These acts will be included in a virtual event, to be hosted by one of Britain’s leading festival and street theatre companies, Markmark.

It will be broadcast online on the Arts Fresco YouTube channel from 11.30am on Sunday September 13.

Neil Kitson, chair of the Arts Fresco organising committee, said: “Arts Fresco is a truly inspiring event that traditionally brings around 10,000 people to the streets of Market Harborough to enjoy some of the best street theatre acts from across the UK and Europe.

“Given the current Covid-19 restrictions and in the interests of community safety, we’re bringing the event online this year to give people a flavour of what to look forward to when it’s safe enough for the festival to return to the streets of the town in 2021.”

Arts Fresco is set up and masterminded by a dedicated team of local business professionals equally passionate about arts and about Market Harborough.

The sponsors of this year's Arts Fresco include: Harborough Twenty12 Lions Club, Rotary Club of Market Harborough, Neil Kitson and Duncan Murray Wines.

For further information about Arts Fresco, visit www.artsfresco.co.uk or follow on social media on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

For more information on Markmark Productions, visit www.markmarkproductions.co.uk