About Flipside

Genevieve Christie

FlipSide was founded in 2013 by Liz Calder, Genevieve Christie, Louis Baum and John Christie. 

FlipSide is the sister festival of FLIP (Festa Literaria Internacional de Paraty), South America's first and largest international literary festival.  

Initially FlipSide was an annual arts festival at Snape Maltings and in its inaugural year the festival welcomed writers from the UK and Brazil including Ian McEwan, Will Self, Milton Hatoum and Bernardo Carvalho.  Since then the festival has taken place in Snape, Lowestoft and Henham, and welcomed an array of wonderful writers from across the globe, including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Ali Smith, Ana Maria Machado, David Hare, Jackie Kay and Benjamin Zephaniah, to name but a few. 

The festival has a strong musical element and has played host to Bebel Gilberto, Adriana Calcanhotto, Paula Morelembaum, Jose Miguel Wisnick, Mônica Vasconcelos and world DJ Gilles Peterson. The festival has also provided Brazilian music workshops in schools and a host of music and dance workshops take place at the festival.

In January 2015 FlipSide became a Registered Charity (1160164)  As a charity our aims are to produce the vibrant FlipSide Festivals and a growing calendar of outreach schools and community literature, music and arts events, opening a window onto a world of new cultural experiences. FlipSide's outreach work has gone from strength to strength, we sit on the board of the Lowetsoft Cultural Education Partnership and the Great Yarmouth Cultural Eductaion Partnership, and we're part of a consortium of arts organisations working on a new cultural strategy for Lowestoft.

Our work in Lowestoft led to us producing a brand new arts festival First Light Festival in collaboration with HemingwayDesign and the first festival took place on 22/23rd June 2019 to great acclaim.  A non-stop 24 hour festival with sunrise as a central focus, First Light Festival attracted more than 30,000 people to Lowestoft.  For more information go to: www.firstlightlowestoft.com 

FlipSide Festival returned to Sweffling's Yew Tree Farm in September 2023, and will be back in 2024.