The Earls Court Development Company and Underbelly Festival bring FREE Open-Air Cinema & City Beach to Earls Court

Underbelly Festival Earls Court will also offer outdoor games, award-winning street food vendors and pop-up bars

As Underbelly Festival’s much-loved Udderbelly stage heads up to the cobbled streets of Edinburgh for the Fringe, The Earls Court Development Company is delighted to partner with Underbelly in bringing a new community offering to the site this summer. From 23 July, Underbelly Festival Earls Court will transform into a free public beach, an open-air cinema alongside street food traders, pop-up bars and games for all ages.

Films in the summer programme include Paddington 2, Sing 2, Encanto, Blade Runner, The Goonies, Spiderman: No Way Home, The Witches, Mary Poppins Returns, Dirty Dancing, JAWS  and many more. There will be films for all ages and all tastes.

Screenings will run at 4pm and 7.30pm every day until early September with additional screenings at 12.30pm at weekends. Customers can watch all films for free with plenty of seating and table service in front the of the giant cinema screen.

Full film listings and schedule can be found at www.underbellyfestival.com and earlscourtdevco.com.

Underbelly Festival Earls Court will also see the return of the outdoor city beach. Guests can soak up the sun reclining on colourful deckchairs, while sipping on an ice-cold beer from Mardi bar, or Tarquin Cornish Gin’s must-try drink of the summer – rhubarb and raspberry gin & ginger featuring Lixir ginger ale, fresh mint and fresh juicy raspberries. On the food front, visitors can tuck into artisanal pizzas from DaNapoli, famed for their simple yet delicious tomato based Marinara. For a taste of the sea, Sea Wise, will continue to serve up their fried squid and other fruits of the sea, and for delicious steak sandwiches and burgers, revellers should head to Herd.

Sarah Gaventa, Creative Director from The Earls Court Development Company said:

We’re delighted to extend Underbelly Festival’s stay at Earls Court and sponsor the new Open-Air Cinema which is free for the whole community to enjoy. With a fantastic line up of films being shown, the return of the city beach and outdoor games, there really is something for everyone. This is all part of our vision to open the site back up and bring the wonder back to Earls Court.”

Keeping the spirit of Underbelly Festival alive in London from July to early September, the site will be open every day from 12pm until late, welcoming locals, tourists and Londoners alike to enjoy.

https://www.underbellyfestival.com/

Earls Court Underbelly
Empress Place, London, SW6 1TT

Three mins walk from West Brompton tube, six mins walk from Earl’s Court tube station (Warwick Road exit)

For further information on Underbelly Festival Earls Court, please contact Kapranos PR.

T: 020 3417 9457
E: grace@kapranos-pr.comgabrielle@kapranos-pr.com

 

 

About Underbelly

Underbelly is a UK based live entertainment company that specialises in producing and programming ground-breaking theatrical productions and the creation of city centre cultural events and festivals. Established in 2000 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Underbelly has since produced shows and events in locations from theatres to roundabouts from London and Edinburgh to Asia.

Our current London events and festivals include Underbelly Festival, Christmas In Leicester Square and Christmas in Trafalgar Square (both for Westminster City Council).  We are also the event production partner for WestEnd Live in Trafalgar Square (on behalf of Westminster City Council and Society London Theatre) and Pride in London, the second largest one day event in London.

Underbelly is one of the leading venue producers at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Highlights of our 21 years at the festival include presenting Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag in 2013, Marlow & Moss’ SIX in 2018, Manual Cinema’s Ada/Ava in 2016, 1927’s Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea in 2007 and Life Jacket’s America is Hard to See in 2019. On the West End, Underbelly is co-producing the celebrated revival of Cabaret, starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley, with Ambassador Theatre Group Productions.

Underbelly also produces Edinburgh’s Christmas and Edinburgh’s Hogmanay Festival (both for City of Edinburgh Council).  In 2020, in lieu of a live events we produced FareWell for the online Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebration which was watched by over 6.5 million people. 

We love creating fantastic and unique pop-up events.  We love entertaining. We love creating something for all ages and all tastes to enjoy.  Most of all, we love live entertainment and events.  In 2019, we sold over 1.4 million tickets to events and productions that we produced and welcomed more than 9 million people to our event and festival sites.

 

About The Earls Court Development Company

The Earls Court Development Company (ECDC) is an Earl’s Court based business, responsible for driving the regeneration of the former Earls Court Exhibition Centre site, covering around 40 acres, on behalf of the Earls Court Partnership – a joint venture between Delancey (on behalf of its client funds including the Dutch pension fund manager, APG) and Transport for London (TfL) that was formed in December 2019. The first decision we took after acquiring the site was to hand back the West Kensington and Gibbs Green housing estates - originally part of the previous owners’ masterplan - to Hammersmith & Fulham Council.

 

Regeneration of the Earls Court site

We have had thousands of conversations with residents, neighbours and local business about the future of the Earls Court site. In late 2021, we launched our latest phase of consultation, showcasing the priorities that will guide the regeneration of the site. This involved a series of in-person public events, webinars and masterplanning workshops with representatives of the local community, to ascertain their priorities for the emerging masterplan.

Over the coming months, more detailed plans will be shared with the public, showcased
at in-person and virtual events, alongside drop-ins at train stations and markets.

Further information about the consultation, and the latest materials, can be found here: https://theearlscourtdevelopmentcompany.com/the-site/the-vision-for-earls-court

Early delivery at Earls Court

ECDC’s site activation programme is central to the early delivery of our commitments both now and for the longer-term masterplan. We have succeeded in opening parts of the Earls Court site to the public for the first time in over a century.

Since acquiring the site in 2019, we have developed close ties with our neighbours, local businesses and the wider community. Investing in the future of the area forms a core principle of our vision for Earls Court. To date, we have done the following:

Homes at Empress Place: Refurbished and bought back into use properties along Empress Place, which were left derelict. During the height of the first national lockdown, these were provided as homes for key workers.

Earls Court Community Fund: Last year, we established a £180,000 a year community fund. In October, grants were awarded to nineteen local organisations, including Dads House, Finsborough Theatre, Barons Court Project, Family Friends, and the Earl’s Court Community Trust, to support their work with local communities, young people and those at risk or vulnerable. Applications have now closed for this year’s round of funding.

Community Hub: Earlier this year, we transformed the former show home of the previous owners into a Community Hub in Aisgill Avenue, in the Gibbs Green Estate. Due to be open later this year, it will provide a range of exercise classes and activities for residents and be capable of supporting meeting spaces for local businesses.

Warwick Road Apron: Last summer, the ‘Pleasure Garden’ installation, designed by local artists Baker & Borowski, was showcased at Warwick Road Apron, as part of K+C Art Week. We are pleased to be holding another installation at the space this summer, supporting the festival for the second consecutive year.

London Wonderground: In collaboration with Underbelly, we launched London Wonderground last summer. In total, we welcomed over 114,000 people to the event, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak. We also created 120 temporary jobs and took 11 young people from the local area through the Underbelly Training Academy. Underbelly has returned to Earls Court this year. Launching in May and running until July, the festival showcases world-class performances and live shows, as well as providing the local community the opportunity to showcase on the bandstand and in the studio – a new, 75-seater event space.

Empress Studios: Working in partnership with Projekt, we have converted six derelict Victorian townhouses into 8,500 sq. ft of workspace for creatives and innovators within Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea. Opening earlier this month, upwards of 30 new workspaces have been created, providing affordable studio and office space for the local arts and science industries.

Lillie Road: We have turned our part of Lille Road into an active high street, providing opportunities for small businesses at The Pop-Up and providing space for small businesses and charities.

Mannequin Factory: We are working on bringing immersive theatre alongside creative and cultural spaces to the former Mannequin Factory an empty building to the northwest of the site. We’ll be announcing more details shortly.

 

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