FESTIVAL of Thrift fever is starting to build with the announcement of some programme highlights for this year’s event.

Mr Wilson’s Second Liners, the brass band intriguingly billed as New Orleans meets 90s club classics, are back for the seventh event on September 14 and 15 at Kirkleatham, near Redcar and will once again entertain festival-goers with their rousing and colourful promenade across the site on the Sunday.

This year’s festival will also include pollution dancers and the return of Cowcar, a band that organisers say was a big hit with visitors last year.

To kick start the weekend, on Friday, September 13, the festival will launch with a Thrifty parade, when a cohort of bikes will make its way from Kirkleatham Museum to join other parade participants to take Thrift through the heart of the town centre and along the sea front to finish at Tuned In.

This year’s parade is called ‘A Breath of Fresh Air’, in line with one of the event’s themes for 2019 of clean air in the Tees Valley and the region’s commitment to improving air quality for all who live there, work there and visit the area.

Led by Stellar Projects, the procession will include a combination of community groups, professional performers and musicians, including last year’s Cowcar, to restate the warning of the dangers of methane emissions, and dancers wearing Kasia Molga’s Human Sensor costumes, which measure and reflect diesel emissions in the atmosphere.

The other theme for the 2019 festival is the celebration of the anniversary of the moon landing and one of the Festival elements is an interactive re-imagining of the historic event by Saltburn based creative artists Whippet Up, which aims to immerse visitors in an out of this world experience.

Fresh from Glastonbury and shifting the focus from the past to a future where we have forgotten how to move, parkour artists Urban Playground will bring their distinctive performance style, dancing at speed and height and incorporating David Attenborough’s narrative, in a show called Zoo Humans.

An extra-terrestrial family adventure inspired by E.T. & Stranger Things called The Unknown will be presented by Manic Chord Theatre.

Children will be transported to another world in a two-part tale, with accompanying downloadable alien app, featuring Amber, a tech savvy teen and her rather more traditional grandmother, Dawn who are onto something supernatural.

Festival of Thrift director, Stella Hall, said “The themes for 2019 have been designed to offer new journeys of discovery into how we can live sustainably together through thought-provoking performances and the festival’s special mix of hands-on fun, food, music, and dance, together with a host of ethical traders.

“These highlights are just a fraction of what we have lined up this year. There’s plenty more to come and, as ever, people can expect the unexpected at the Festival of Thrift,” Stella added.

“We take huge pride in being a one-of-a-kind event with our packed celebration of sustainable living and we are promising another riot of ways to have fun.”