TALENTED Boscombe residents joined other artists, musicians and dancers performing at the area’s second Fringe Festival at the weekend.

The event kicked off on Thursday with a performance of the play Our Stories Will Remain at Vita Nova’s theatre in Roumelia Lane – a collaboration between the charity’s own writers and actors, drawn from their real life experiences.

Many of the weekend’s offerings included performers with drug and alcohol addictions and mental health issues, as Vita Nova uses the arts to help people recover from these issues.

They took place at venues across Boscombe, including Chaplin’s & The Cellar Bar and the Shelley Theatre.

Artistic director Gemma Alldred said: “It went really well, we had a good audience for every event and the more popular ones were almost full.

“We wanted to build on our success last year by making it a bigger event and using more venues across Boscombe, helping the development of the area.”

A particularly popular show during the four-day event was the song cycle Torsten the Bareback Saint – fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival – which was performed at the Shelley Theatre on Friday evening – written by Bournemouth born musician Barney Ashton-Bullock.

Other events included an ‘immersive cinema’ showing of The Usual Suspects at the Factory Studios in Haviland Road, a stand-up comedy performance by Frankie Owens based on his experiences of the prison system, and local poet Jane Cartwright’s performance piece Kerb – a frank tale of her life and struggles with addiction.

“One of the important aspects of this festival is it helps many of our performers in terms of their personal development as well as their artistic development,” added Ms Alldred.

“We would like to be bigger and better again next year and we will be looking through the feedback we received from audiences to see what they would like to see more of.”