FROM giant kinetic sculptures at Kendal Castle, to a singalong with a virtual reality choir on top of Great Gable, this year's Lakes Alive festival promises to "excite, enthral and delight".

The cultural extravaganza - from September 7 to 9 - will once again be transforming spaces in Kendal and inviting residents and visitors to experience a vibrant programme presented by artists from home and abroad.

This year's festival has been inspired by the living landscape and the elements, explained director Phillippa Haynes. "We hope that our diverse programme of art, dance, music, performance and merriment will be a festival for you to see, listen, watch, make, take part in and be amazed by," she said. "We want Lakes Alive to stimulate the senses and create time and space to pause for thought. Come along, dip your toe in or dive in head first. Bring the family, bring a friend and bring a sense of fun. The scene for an exciting weekend is to be set by a Jacob's Join community dining experience beside the River Kent, with music and dancing from Cut a Shine, an exuberant troupe of musicians, ceilidh dancers and callers.

After dark, a specially commissioned community performance - Thunder - will bring together more than 80 drummers in a colossal meeting of the elements, leading everyone up to Kendal Castle for an installation created by award-winning artist Ray Lee, 2012’s British Composer of the Year for Sonic Art.

Chorus is described as “a monumental installation of giant kinetic sculptures and a celestial choir of spinning sound machines”. Later, festival goers can join Shirley Pegna’s Star Walks by Star Light on a journey through the night-scape of Scout Scar to listen to the sounds from the stars - amplified and explained.

The weekend will continue with a “promenade trail” of happenings in Kendal, from fast-paced, joyous and lively, to gentle, quiet and reflective.

Bhangra is one of the world’s fastest growing dance forms, and Harvest promises to give a high-energy introduction to it. Abbot Hall Park will be transformed into “a world of white linen and mayhem” by the Laundry Ladies; and there is a chance to sing along with a massed virtual reality choir on Great Gable’s summit, without walking a step.

All at Sea offers the prospect of a lone boatman rowing gently through the tides of the world and a personal storm; while the installation A Mile in My Shoes invites people to walk in a stranger’s footsteps, from a Syrian refugee to a neurosurgeon. New dance commission Walking Watling Street celebrates women’s suffrage and the little-known achievement of 50,000 women who marched from Carlisle to London in 1913.

In Grasmere, meanwhile, Dutch composers Strijbos and Van Rijswijk with poet Jacob Polley have created a contemporary walking sound installation, called To Travel and To Matter, with a digital app for phones that moves you at your own pace through a glorious landscape.

Also part of Lakes Alive 2018 is Wolves, a digital project that allows people to track and document the life of a virtual pack of wolves as they travel through their habitat.

By uploading images to the website, players can add their pictures to the game map. To find out more, visit the website wolves.live where you can sign up to track the wolves online once the system goes live September 7.

Lakes Alive is a free event made possible with funding from the Arts Council England, Lake District National Park Authority, South Lakeland District Council, Kendal Town Council, Kendal BID, Cumbria County Council, Friends of the Lake District, the Hadfield Foundation and the Big Lottery Fund.

For more, visit lakesalive.co.uk. To volunteer at Lakes Alive call Holly on 01539-792610 or email lakesalive@lakedistrict.gov.uk