LAKES Alive promises an extraordinary weekend of incredibly imaginative contemporary arts.

Running from Friday-Sunday, September 8-10, the free festival for families and fans of all things creative takes place at seven locations across Kendal with activities at Abbot Hall Park, Brewery Arts Centre, Castle Howe, Kendal Castle, Riverside Walk, Shakespeare Centre and The Factory.

Transforming spaces into mind-boggling installations, the Lakes Alive spectacle starts on Friday with a Jacob's Join at 6pm at Riverside Walk, behind the parish church.

Desperate Men host the fabulous feast while folk band Mazurka and dynamic drummers Spark! provide the music.

With the theme of Cultural Landscapes, Lakes Alive showcases world class work.

After dining out, festivalgoers should receive the first sighting of artist Pete Johnson's major art and light installation Shipping Forecast, situated at Kendal Castle.

The castle is the location too for artist Richard Shilling's Seek, a fantastic large-scale, land art piece.

Also on the weekend menu, well-known Cumbrian sound artist Dan Fox brings Cymbria to the Lakes Alive table, a new work created with the voices and sounds of Cumbria and inspired by the River Kent.

Dance also serves up a sizeable helping of this year’s programme with London-based Folk Dance Remixed, a collision of traditional and hip hop dance and music performing throughout the weekend.

FDR perform Step Hop House on the Saturday, 1.30pm and 5pm, at Abbot Hall Park; Sunday at noon and 3.30pm, Abbot Hall Park.

The movers and shakers of FDR will be 'doing their thing' alongside northern dance companies AbouTime Dance and Hawk Dance Theatre, who bring traditional and contemporary moves to the streets of Kendal.

AbouTime Dance perform at three venues across the festival.

The company's new work, Cotton, is intertwined with traditional clog dancing, mesmerising sound design and intricate choreography, staged on Saturday 2.30pm at The Factory, 4.30pm at Abbot Hall Park; Sunday 1pm at Abbot Hall Park, 3pm at the Brewery.

Directed by Josh Hawkins, visually dynamic Hawk Dance Theatre gives a fluid dance performance that looks at 'what would happen if we stopped to notice the world around us.' HDT performs Pass on Saturday at 11.30am Abbot Hall, 1.30pm the Brewery, 3.15pm The Factory.

Standout environmental artist Steve Messam is also playing his part in this year's gathering with a stunning and audacious dramatic site-specific commission, installed at Castle Howe, Bankfield Rd, off Beast Banks, from 10.30am-6pm.

One of the UK's most adventurous and inventive outdoor creators, Steve's Keep aims to rebuild the castle as it was, in a modern playful kind of way.

Lakes Alive's 'big' international commission is To Travel and To Matter, an adventurous walk and sound installation by Dutch composers Strijbos and Van Rijswijk with acclaimed poet Jacob Polley.

Located in Grasmere and Elterwater on walking trails and open fells, To Travel and To Matter uses Strijbos and Van Rijswijk’s digital app Walk With Me to move the listener at their own pace through a glorious landscape and create a unique and dramatic experience on the route.

Adding even more colourful and cultural ingredients to Lakes Alive 2017, will be The Factory, which will be a hive of activity throughout the weekend with dozens of artists throwing open their studio doors.

Across the River Kent at Abbot Hall Park, on Friday, from 6pm-10pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 10am-6pm, stands Illumaphonium by Michael and Gem Davis, a four-metre high, beautifully tuned array of illuminated aluminium chime bars that respond to touch with constantly evolving patterns of light and sound.

Meanwhile, The Paper Birds will swoop into the Brewery with Mobile, Paper Birds' second show in a trilogy about class in modern Britain.

Staged in a caravan, Mobile is an inventive and intimate piece of verbatim theatre about class, family and belonging. Based on personal testimonies collected in the community workshops, from research by collaborator Professor Sam Friedman, and the company’s own lives, the play explores our sense of home, aspiration and the realities of social mobility. Performances are Saturday and Sunday: noon, 12.45pm, 1.30pm, 2.30pm, 3.15pm, 5pm, 5.45pm, 6.30pm, 7.30pm and 8.15pm.

Elsewhere, the Shakespeare Centre will be the hub for several inspiring talks and films from some of the festival artists and experts about the world's spectacular landscapes.

Included will be popular Cumbrian starman Stuart Atkinson, who explores the biggest landscape of all - Space.

During his two talks on Saturday and Sunday (1pm-2pm) astronomer and author Stuart will take Lakes Alive audiences on a tour of the night sky, in the Secret Landscape of the Lakes.

Phillippa Haynes, Lakes Alive festival director, said they were really excited about the diverse programme of fantastic work by world class arts from home and abroad.

She added: “We want the festival to be a playful and eclectic promenade through the cultural landscape of the newest UNESCO World Heritage Site”.