Festival

See the original sites for Pestival 2009 at London's Southbank, and the first Pestival in 2006

Next festival: Pestival does Brazil... come with us

"The Glastonbury of the natural world" - The Guardian

The next Pestival will be held in São Paulo. Let the fun begin! We can't wait and expect it to be amazing as it's so close to the throbbing heart of the insect world, the Amazon rainforest. The previous Pestival, held at London's Southbank Centre, had 220,000 visitors and a garnered a huge amount of UK and international media coverage.

We're also once again working with Wellcome Collection on an event to be held in their beautiful gallery. 

Visit the Pestival 2009 site | Latest Pestival events | Pestival's mission & story

Pestival 2009 - Southbank Centre in London

For our last major festival in 2009, Pestival took over London's world famous Southbank Centre in London. It was a great success with 220,000 visitors enjoying over 50 interactive events and workshops and talks given by experts at the very cutting edge of art and science.

Check out the incredible number and variety of events by taking a look at the programme brochure here.

Pestival's press campaign reached over 10 million people worldwide. The media coverage included all the broadsheet newspapers, TV and Radio; from high art and science journals, and culture and style magazines such as Time Out, to ITV News and BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme. BBC London Weather even broadcast live from the Termite Pavillion.

Get a flavour of the festival by watching 'Pestival 2009 - The movie' and also take a video-tour around the award-winning Termite Pavilion exhibit on the right in our 'Video' area.

There was also international press coverage including by the New York Times and Nippon TV. You can see images from the festival below as well as taking a closer look at The Termite Pavilion.

Perhaps most importantly, 98% of visitors said it changed their perception of insects and their importance to the health of the planet and humans daily lives.

See Pestival-goers give their reaction to camera.

 Check out a gallery of images from the festival:

Pestival 2006 - At The Wetlands Centre, Barnes, South West London

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”

It was thoughts such as this from the Pulitzer-winning E.O Wilson, father of 'sociobioligy', that helped to inspire and bring Pestival into being.

The First International Arts Pestival was dedicated to raising awareness of the integral role insects play in the global ecosystem and in all animal societies. Many of those insects being increasingly endangered through human action.

Through appreciation of “insects in art and the art of being an insect”, at Pestival 2006 we created positive PR for this 400-million-year-old, highly evolved taxon that has had thousands of years of bad press.

We held a fantastic programme of talks, demonstrations, workshops, art installations, films, music and performance, fusing art and science to reach out to a broad, interested audience of homo sapien adults and children.

Visit the original website for the festival (something of a retro-classic now!) to get more of an idea of what went on and the nature of the event, and see images from the weekend.