Online during the festival from
9pm Sat 2 - 9pm Sun 3 May
Oh Europa is a labour of love; a project that spans a continent and cuts straight to the heart.
Since 2018, Action Hero (Gemma Paintin & James Stenhouse) have been travelling through Europe, asking strangers to sing a love song. So far, Gemma & James have recorded the voices of over a thousand people, singing about love and heartbreak in 46 different languages. They have travelled over 46,000km through 33 European countries, spending more than 300 days and nights on the road living in their van, which doubles as a mobile recording studio.
Gemma & James invite you to join them in an act of collective listening, as they re-broadcast the love songs they have recorded as part of RadiOh Europa.
An epic “deep-listening-experience”, RadiOh Europa is a live radio show, playing love songs from the heart-lands of Europe. Detached from political posturing, hollow rhetoric and empty sound bites, these love songs transmit a heartfelt message instead: an opportunity to hear ourselves emerge out of the white noise.
Tune in online from 9pm Sat 2 May - 9pm Sun 3 May to hear all the love songs recorded to date by global performers, and newly recorded songs from North East artists including Ross Millard of The Futureheads, Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington of Hen Ogledd (performing two separate songs) musical artist Beccy Owen and actor Charlie Hardwick.
Image: Pelagia Karanikola
Ticket information and accessing events online
Due to Covid-19, this year's GIFT festival has been re-imagined online providing a digital space for us to come together and experience work and participate in virtual discussion events and workshop activities.
You can make a donation to support this year’s festival here
Programme notes
Download PDF below
Artist biographies
Action Hero
Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse share an interdisciplinary performance practice together under the name Action Hero. Since 2005, they have created performances spanning theatre, live art, installation, multi media and site-specific practice, which have toured to over 30 countries across 5 continents.
Their ongoing interests lie in the iconography of popular culture and its use; both as a weapon and as a shared cultural memory. Action Hero’s work is always experimenting with form, and as a result their work expands across multiple creative practices. Although they work primarily with live performance, they regularly work with processes and mediums with which they are unfamiliar, adopting a radical DIY approach which often sees them navigating solo through new technical and creative territories.