Event
Summer Festival: Bubbling
Graphic design by Studio Plan B
3–9pm Free admission, booking essential Fully booked Bedford Square Gardens & YDP
YDP is excited to announce the inaugural summer festival, Bubbling, a convivial gathering celebrating embodied practices. The festival foregrounds how the slow fermentation of micro-actions can catalyse profound personal and social change. Taking place at the height of summer—when the hot weather makes fermentation bubble with the most vigour—participatory performances, workshops and interactive installations by eleven artists and collectives will unfold across the YDP building and Bedford Square Gardens.
Come taste summer leaves, feel your body like a tree trunk, dance with soil and listen to whispers and a chorus alike. Together, we turn our awareness to the joy of embodied connections, while also holding space for their complexity and fragility.
Curated by YDP curator Erin Li.
FULL PROGRAMME
Mohammad Alfaraj Walking Trees 3–4pm, workshop 5–5:30pm, participatory performance The workshop from 3pm to 4pm has limited capacity, booking essential Please select 'Walking Trees' tickets when booking Led by artist Mohammad Alfaraj, participants will engage with tree trunks and their bark, circles, lines and branches as traces of and whispers from our long-lost relatives, the unforgiving and always-remembering witnesses of our times. The workshop and resulting performance invite us to reconnect with the idea that our bodies are trunks, our limbs are branches and our hair is leaves. Essentially, we are nothing but walking trees.
Jumana Emil Abboud The Water Diviners 4–4:30pm & 6–6:30pm, participatory performance The Water Diviners is artist Jumana Emil Abboud’s long-term project centred on endangered springs and waters, inspiring collective storytelling and making through enchantment, entanglement and community. This new iteration of participatory spoken-word performance weaves together waterlore drawn from folktales, personal accounts, inherited traditions and envisioned futures. Originally inspired by Palestinian springs, the collective stories in the performance channel the diverse bodies of water that have shaped the lives of ten extraordinary water diviners, brought together in a series of workshops at YDP. Participating Diviners: Zhengyuan Dai, Jessica Holland, Sohyeon Kim, Jamie Pazmino, Angelina Radaković, A Sai Ta, Julia Treuer, Zijing Ye, Reina Yoda and Kaixiang Zhang, along with Jumana Emil Abboud. Monya Riachi ft. Anaïs Mims Ma’amoul Stories 3–6pm, collaborative food installation
Ma’amoul Stories is a collaborative food installation celebrating edible heritage. Visitors are invited to gather around a communal table to share stories and participate in the ancient craft of making ma’amoul. A traditional cookie filled with nuts or dates, ma’amoul has cultural significance across Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Jordan. Each ma’amoul is individually shaped to reflect its filling, with decorative patterns that reference its storied history. Prepared in abundance to mark celebrations and extend generosity, ma’amoul making is an act of community. Through Ma’amoul Stories, audience members will join in making, tasting and recollecting, actively transmitting living heritage into the future.
The installation features illustrations by Anaïs Mims. Imogen Kwok 3–6pm, food installation A floating sheet of preserved leaves invites visitors to taste the landscape. This interactive, edible installation offers a visceral experience of seasonal, organic materials. The leaves are preserved using contemporary dehydration and syrup glazing techniques – a modern echo of ancestral preservation methods that resonate across cultures.
We learn through our bodies. By tearing, plucking and savouring these leaves, audience members are invited to a moment of stillness within the beautiful chaos of nature. Yoojin Lee & Savannah Theis Weighty Matter(s) 5:30–8pm, movement workshop Limited capacity, separate booking essential Please select 'Weighty Matter(s)' tickets when booking Weighty Matter(s) explores weight, gravity and how matter(s) are carried, shared and redistributed across bodies. Interacting with small soft weights filled with compost (gathered in Bedford Square, as well as in Theis’s garden and Lee’s allotment) and reclaimed debris, we’ll bear, press and release, attending to how we are shaped by – and shape – these forces. Compost guides the process, digesting what accumulates. Through gleaning, heaping, re- and decomposing, we turn over what breaks down and what comes up. How do things spill or become dense? What can be held? What needs to give way? What forms, relations and imaginaries arise when we follow weighty matters all the way down? TRANS VOICES 8–8:45pm, experimental choral work The closing performance of the inaugural YDP Summer Festival, TRANS VOICES’s signature improvisational sound bath invites participants to experience a transformative blend of guided meditation, breathwork and original compositions. Merging vocals with ambient electronics, this performance explores themes of memory, self-determination and collective liberation. Michele Chu 3–9pm, sound trail Michele Chu created a trail of site-specific sound scores scattered through the garden for visitors to wander and explore at their own pace. Each station invites a different mode of listening: inward to oneself, outward to a friend or passing stranger and beyond to the garden itself – the wind, the leaves, the ground beneath our feet. Hum, pause, listen. What happens when we listen, quietly, together? What happens when we train our ears – not just to hear, but also to connect? Playfool 3–9pm, pervasive game As technology becomes increasingly digital, we grow more distant from its material foundations. By repurposing the forgotten concept of the photophone, the precursor to the fibre-optic cables that connect the online world, this game encourages players to attune to technology’s invisible materiality. To play, visitors must hunt for a series of light nodes scattered throughout the garden. Using a custom device that translates light waves into sound, players can uncover encoded messages hidden in plain sight. By responding to and altering the light bulbs’ transmissions, participants engage in a continuously transforming, living dialogue with friends and strangers alike in the garden. RESOLVE Collective ajar 3–9pm, pavilion, seating and self-guided play corner ajar is a pavilion and self-guided play area that considers the proximity of microbial and social exchange. The design of the pavilion draws on home-brewing and its relation to social unrest, reform and revolt, interrogating the ideological proximity of fermenting practices and intra-communal food sovereignty with practices of resistance. Constructed entirely from reused materials, the pavilion is a convivial space that sits at the interchange of the practices of fellow festival artists. Around the pavilion, audiences can participate in self-guided play inspired by ‘backslopping’, the fermentation technique used to make garri or kefir, in which a small quantity of the previous fermentate is used as the template for the next batch. Here, participants will use deconstructed timber offcuts and other salvaged materials to create, replicate and remix their own structures.
Qizlar Collective Are We in a Bubble? 3–5pm & 6–8pm, workshop Limited capacity, separate booking essential Please select 'Are We in a Bubble?' tickets when booking It is possible that we all live inside bubbles, shaped by family, language, class, culture and the places we call home. This workshop is an invitation to explore our individual bubbles and their (in)visible boundaries. Through drawing, free writing and photography, participants will map their personal world: where it starts, what builds its edges and what gets left outside. At the end of the session, we will combine and intersect our maps into a collective whole. No pressure, no presentations—just a shared space for looking and reflecting. Kaixiang Zhang ft. Yoma Ziyu Liang 3–9pm, creative refreshments Hosted by artist Kaixiang Zhang and chef Yoma Ziyu Liang, this creative pop-up tearoom interprets ‘bubbling’ as both a culinary texture and a reflection of urban community. Milk-washed, fermented and botanical beverages are paired with artisan snacks found in the festival goodie bag handed to visitors. By transforming taste and smell into a transient, shared language, these flavourful encounters bridge our individual relationships with food, offering a relaxed moment of togetherness and connection.
Bubbling full programme
About the Artists
Jumana Emil Abboud’s creative practice explores memory, loss, and resilience across multiple strands, among them the Water Diviners project, which has seen activations in Palestine, Kassel, Dubai, New York, North Wales, London and Al Ahsa.
She has presented at major venues that included the Jameel Arts Centre, Cample Line, Documenta 15, TAVROS, Seoul Museum of Art, Darat al Funun, Bildmuseet, BALTIC, and the Biennales of Diriyah, Sydney, Venice, Qalandiya, Istanbul and Sharjah. Recognitions include the Jameel Fellowship at the Victoria & Albert Museum and shortlisting for Joan Miró and Artes Mundi 11 prizes. Abboud holds a PhD in Fine Art and is based in London.
A multidisciplinary artist, Mohammad Alfaraj (b. 1993, Al Ahsa) develops a practice that blends writing, video, photography, drawing and sculpture from the Al Ahsa Oasis, where he lives and works. Steeped in the oral traditions of Saudi Arabia, the artist draws inspiration from social practices, urban or rural architectures and narratives of daily life to explore the relationships between humans and nature. His works often take the form of poetic fables that question contemporary ecological, social and cultural issues.
Michele Chu (b. 1994, Hong Kong) lives and works in Hong Kong. Her practice explores intimacy and human connection, specifically the interplay between sensory elements and space to amplify emotional connections between individuals. Her works contemplate what makes us human, through mediums including performance, sculpture, multi-sensory installations and public interventions. Her work has been shown at MACA Art Center (Beijing), Aranya Art Center (Qinhuangdao), Para Site (Hong Kong), Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong), Delfina Foundation at Young Space (London) and 1a space (Hong Kong). Her debut solo exhibition at PHD Group (Hong Kong), you, trickling, was featured in the New York Times, Artforum, ArtReview Asia, frieze, Ocula and other publications.
At the intersection of cuisine, craft and material thinking, the practice of Imogen Kwok (b. 1991, Sydney) is driven by a particular tension: food is chaos. Natural, beautiful chaos. Kwok applies the same rigour to food that one would metal, glass or fabric—while embracing the fact that everything she makes will eventually melt, bruise, oxidise or, of course, be eaten.
Food is unpredictable, irregular, constantly changing; it refuses to sit still. Rather than trying to eliminate this disorder, Kwok works within it. Through cooking, she creates moments of stillness inside inherent unruliness, finding beauty before the first bite, taste and touch. Kwok was born in Sydney, raised in New York City and currently lives in London and works internationally.
Yoojin Lee (b. Seoul) works across and in-between performance, installation, text, sound and video to embody ways of becoming and knowing. Her work engages with quiet, lesser-noticed but persistent forms of resistance and relating that unfold through multiple temporalities, such as sleep, slowness and symbiosis. She sleeps in London.
Qizlar Collective (founded in 2022) is a grassroots feminist collective working at the intersection of art, culture, education and community-building, with a focus on Uzbekistan and Central Asia. Their mission is to create opportunities and empower women and girls by building safe, free and inclusive spaces for learning and artistic expression. They see culture and creativity as tools for systemic change, enabling dialogue, reflection and the reimagining of dominant norms.
RESOLVE (est. 2016, London) is an interdisciplinary design collective that combines architecture, engineering, technology and art to address social challenges. They have delivered numerous projects, workshops, publications and talks in the UK and across the world, all of which look towards realising just and equitable visions of change in our built environment.
Much of RESOLVE’s work aims to provide platforms for the production of new knowledge and ideas. An integral part of this way of working means designing with and for young people and under-represented groups in society. Here, ‘design’ encompasses both physical and systemic intervention, exploring ways of using a project’s site as a resource and working with different communities as stakeholders in the short and long-term management of projects. In this way, design carries more than aesthetic value; it is also a mechanism for political and socio-economic change.
Playfool is an art-design duo by Daniel Coppen (b. London) and Saki Maruyama (b. Fukushima). Through experimental games and interactive installations, they use play to intervene in and reimagine the relationship between human agency and technology, inviting critical dialogue with our techno-social reality.
Playfool is a fellow at institutions including Onassis ONX (Athens) and CCBT (Tokyo). Their work has been awarded in the S+T+ARTS Prize (2024) and Dezeen Award (2021), and exhibited internationally at the Science Gallery (Monterrey, 2025), Ars Electronica (Linz, 2024) and the V&A (London, 2023).
Monya Riachi is an interdisciplinary artist from Lebanon. Led by materials and contextual research, her practice interlaces politics, poetry and affect. Her works approach matter as a site of narrative, movement and transformation, and entangle the political geographies of her home and adopted countries, Lebanon and Britain. She collaborates with musicians, craftspeople, writers, geologists, materials scientists and philosophers in the research and making of her work, often realised through sculpture, installation, writing and performance. Riachi holds an MFA from Glasgow School of Art. She was selected for the Sharjah Art Foundation Residency (2026) and was awarded the Lewisham Arthouse Graduate Award (2024) and the Boghossian Foundation Visual Arts Prize (2024). Previous residencies include Lewisham Arthouse (London, 2024), Cove Park (Scotland, 2023) and Ashkal Alwan (Lebanon, 2022). Her work has been exhibited in the UK, Lebanon and Italy, with solo presentations in London and Glasgow.
Savannah Theis (b. Siegburg) is a London-based artist and facilitator exploring sense-making at the intersection of bodily experience, collective dynamics and social contexts. Devising and drawing on improvisational tools from fields including group dialogue, drawing, choreography, somatic practices and the healing arts, she develops perception exercises engaging with ways different forms of sensorial attention alter how we relate to ourselves, one another and our worlds. Often collaborating and co-creating settings for participation, she is interested in communal learning processes and the conditions facilitating how we speak, listen, move and make sense together.
TRANS VOICES blend meditative soundscapes, emerging technology, choral tradition and bold vocal experimentation to reclaim spaces where trans perspectives are rarely heard. Founded by Coda Nicolaeff and Ilā Kamalagharan, their portfolio of work includes a critically acclaimed spatial sound installation at the Barbican; a Guardian documentary; an award-winning digital campaign with Absolut; and collaborations with Kesha, Olly Alexander, and Imogen Heap, as well as talks and performances at Harvard and Oxford Universities.
Kaixiang Zhang (b. 2001, Wenzhou) explores the threshold between the manifestation and dissipation of matter. His captures subtle dialogues between mutable things, ranging from the tidal rhythms of the Thames and the silken architecture of spiders to the river of his childhood. For Kaixiang, social engagement is a ritual of togetherness. He uses food as an intimate language to build connections, hosting communal gatherings with friends at venues including MACA Art Center (Beijing), Tiderip Gallery (London) and APT Gallery (London).
