Playa Honda becomes a stage for two days: Heart Lanzarote turns five

Playa Honda is not a place you visit: it is where people live, between Arrecife and the airport. For two days, on 16 and 17 October, it turns into a stage. Heart Lanzarote, the performing-arts festival, is back for its fifth edition.

Where it happens

Most of the programme is concentrated in the Parque Urbano. On Saturday the festival spills out along the Avenida de Playa Honda, the seafront.

What is different this year

The word the organisers keep using is immersive: less «show at the front, audience sitting down», more things happening around you that you walk into.

Two concrete additions:

• Hábitat — an open-air exhibition grown out of workshops run with island collectives over the past months. Not art shipped in: made here, by people who live here.
• Orkestrònia — an interactive installation for making music out of everyday objects. Of the two, this is the one that grabs the children and does not let go.

What kind of festival it is

Its three chosen words are sustainability, inclusion and participation, and so far those are everybody's words. The difference here is that the audience performs inside the shows rather than watching them.

The director, Yvonne Thiery, put it this way: «Reaching the fifth edition delights us, but above all it confirms that Heart makes sense. We want people to come, enjoy themselves, be moved and have a good time — but also to take something away».

At the launch were the mayor of San Bartolomé, Isidro Pérez; the Cabildo's culture councillor, Jesús Machín; the head of Promotur, José Juan Lorenzo; and Mari Carmen Fernández of the Art, Culture and Tourism Centres. For a village festival in its fifth year, that is a lot of institution in one room.

In practice

Friday 16 and Saturday 17 October — Parque Urbano and Avenida de Playa Honda, San Bartolomé.
Exact performance times are due in the coming days: as soon as they are out, they will be here.

One tip: Playa Honda has real parking and a long beach. You can arrive in the afternoon, swim, and stay for the evening.