June Boom Week Three: 16-22 June 2025

Welcome to Week 3 of June Boom - and the action keeps on giving! We were very busy Culture Vultures all week, fitting in a whole host of Art Week activities, including Patter Scatter and Music is Murder at Exeter Phoenix, the Art Pub Quiz at the Port Royal pub on Saturday, and on Sunday we rounded off this jam-packed week with a couple of hours at a gloriously sunny Art Car Boot on Piazza Terracina. Want to catch up on what’s happened already? Head to our blogs and write-ups page for the inside story on the Daylight Sessions comedy special, the TerraForma film event at Exeter Custom House, The Museum of Roadside Magic and Matter of Britain: Fabulous Beasts, Word Kitchen, exhibitions at Positive Light Projects on Sidwell Street, plus Involving Music’s experience of the Respect Festival, Twin Atlantic at the Phoenix and Haytor at The Cavern… But now, onwards to what’s coming up…

Literature Works (the South West’s literature development agency) have been in residence at Exeter Custom House since 2020, running their wonderful Quay Words programme. On Wednesday 18th, literary big hitter Philip Marsden joins the Quay Words team to discuss his book Under a Metal Sky (6.30pm at Custom House), which interrogates our extractive relationship with the earth.

Similarly interrogating our relationships with the environment, the Custom House’s other Cultural Partner, Art Work Exeter, continue their ‘Pile Up! Worlds of Stuff’ programme, which is exploring the hidden currents of the material world and how they connect with the fabric of our everyday lives. On until 29 June, the exhibition features new artwork by Louise Ashcroft & Farmer Glitch, and Freya Gabie. In part inspired by research trips to Exeter City Council’s Materials Reclamation Facility, Louise and Farmer Glitch have created a multimedia sculpture that takes you to the centre of the Facility’s enormous green sorting machine’s darkly sublime storm – a sculptural entanglement of e-waste and audio-visuals, with a soundscape made with participants of ‘storm machine’ sound workshops using electronics and trash. Freya’s work uses material aspects of our environment that are consciously overlooked or edited out – wastewater, weeds, used plastic – to speak about different forms of worth and value.

Pile Up! Worlds of Stuff

As part of the exceedingly rich Pile Up programme, on Thursday 19th the Custom House welcomes artists Sue Palmer and Sheila Ghelani, whose ‘Atmospheric Forces’ is a performance along a table – a ‘show and talk’ – that explores the interconnections between climate and geology, fuel and feelings. If you saw these artists present their ‘Common Salt’ show at Southernhay House Hotel back in 2019, you’ll know that Exeter is once again in for an insightful, thought-provoking evening of performance and conversation. Not to be missed.

Similarly melding performance and science, Robin Ince (he of The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox on Radio 4) will be at the Phoenix on Thursday 19th with ‘The Universe and the Neurodiverse’ – a poetry-storytelling-comedy-music mash-up that explores the incredible diversity of our minds. It is a show about Jane Goodall and chimpanzees, about Apollo 8 and the Earthrise image, about our environment, about climate change, about neurodiversity and about finding joy and inspiration. 

There’ll also be much joy and inspiration to be found across the city at a host of free events on Saturday 21st, including the Creative Street Festival takeover on Magdalen Road from 12noon till 6pm. Expect a plethora of yummy food and produce stalls with the added bonus of a marquee filled with creative makers and artists demonstrating, workshopping and sharing their skills and wares - try your hand at singing, weaving, printing and playing musical instruments. If food is your thing, then head over to Piazza Terracina (9am-1pm) for the first Exeter Quayside Farmers’ Market of the summer, with a hearty offering of glorious local growers and artisan producers.

For music lovers, Exeter Phoenix is hosting some cracking nostalgic feel-goods this week. On Wednesday 18th, The Smyths present ‘Meat is Murder’ - a show that will celebrate the album alongside a full collection of classic hits and more from The Smiths. On Saturday 21st, Mark Travis Eagles Acoustic is an intimate evening with one voice and one guitar, featuring classic songs from the Eagles as well as some of Mark’s original songs. Over at the Corn Exchange, on Friday 20th, Beatles Complete presents a night of Beatlemania packed with massive hits - the Cavern Club in Liverpool have said that these chaps are ‘one of the most exciting Beatles tributes around’, and they should know! At Exeter Northcott, on Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd, you can catch The Best of Queen with the UK’s biggest Queen tribute band, Majesty. Expect all the greatest hits and a spectacular light show. For something a little more laid back, on Sunday 22nd head to the Transit Shed down on the Quay, where the Devon Jazz Youth Orchestra will be providing the soundtrack to your afternoon.

For the lowdown on the indie music scene, head to our Culture Collaborators Involving Music for the full story.

For theatre fans, Living Room Theatre present a compilation of Samuel Beckett’s plays in ‘The End is the Beginning’ at Studio 36 in St Leonards on Sunday 22nd. Performers Sarah White and Philip Robinson will take the audience through the endeavours of many of Beckett's absurd and tragic characters, in their struggle to exist and to remember. Structured as a fragmentary progression, the show is a celebration of the act of trying again, failing again, failing better. 

Gosh, what a bevy of creativity! See you next week for our next exciting check in…