Kings of Concrete
From 03 July 2010 to 04 July 2010
No matter how many exclamation marks we use and how much mileage we get out of the superlatives of the adjective ‘rapid', we could never approach describing Kings of Concrete, the city's rapidest celebration of street culture, as enthusiastically as festival organizer and all-round bro, Dave. So we'll just shut up.
‘This year's festival is lining up pretty fucking sweetly. We've got some kick-ass artists, performer-wise. There are going to be some of our best skaters ever this year. The amount of people involved since last year has exploded.
Last year we put a push on the competitive element of the festival. This year we want to broaden the reach, tap into other elements of street culture - specifically photography and film-making. There wasn't a competitive element to art in the festival before. This year we're going to have a competition with two Vespas - we'll get one artist per bike, and they'll have to repaint them. Some guys put up awesome videos on Youtube last year - so we thought we'd bring that into the festival this year - we want it to become a major part over time. There are going to be 5 teams of filmmakers and editors who'll film all Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and they have to cut, finish, and show their film by 10pm Sunday night, at the close of festival, which will be a serious challenge. These elements are massive parts of the culture we haven't paid attention to before.
So much energy goes into the family element of the festival, with kids and parents down at the site during the day - we're now putting in more to adult demographic at night. We'll have a launch on the 11th June in Le Cirk, with a taste of what's to come - beatboxing battles, video showcases, DJs, live collaborations, runner designers on the night so you can bring down your shoes and give them a makeover, body tattooing.
The Saturday night of the festival in the Bernard Shaw we're doing in collaboration with the Small Print - an exhibition called Deck the Halls where 30 creative artists will customize a blank skateboard deck, which we'll hang on the halls of the Shaw. Boards are then up for sale for the artist and for the festival fundraising too. We'll close the festival with an awesome party in the Button Factory on Sunday too.
It's going to be full sensory overload.'
Get decked down at this year's Kings of Concrete at Wood Quay and throughout Temple Bar this 3rd and 4th of July.
Website: www.facebook.com/kingsofconcrete