FROM stunning sonic sculptures by the Riverside and theatre staged in your living room, to live poetry and the chance to follow a trail to a veritable constellation of creative surprises, Whitley Arts Festival is back for 2013 to continue its reputation for blending artistic innovation and accessibility.

The flagship installation of the festival, which runs from this Friday until Friday, November 15, is Ray Lee’s Chorus, six-metre high tripods which emit dazzling lights and carefully curated audio at the Oracle Riverside.

Festival director, Ed Harcourt, told us more.

“Ray Lee is British composer of the year for sonic art. There will be five six-metre high tripods at the Oracle Riverside, and they have these rotating arms on the top that emit light and sounds that are specifically created for each venue that he uses.

“It's an interactive audio-visual experience. It's going to look like a cross between War of the worlds and The Wickerman! You will be able to see it from a long way away and it's fascinating to watch and listen to and wander round within it. It's free and totally accessible - you can rock up any of the given times and experience it.”

Ray’s installation will be at The Oracle for one day only, Friday - with performances at 1.45pm, 6.15pm and 10.15pm - but the festival has plenty more to offer until mid-November, from workshops at Hexham Road Community Centre and films at Reading University and Rising Arts Centre, to Reneea Ransome’s exhibition Not Available In Your County, a musing on how consumerism affects developing countries, in Harris Arcade.

Ed added that Constellation, an arts trail running Friday was a coming together of many of the festival’s regular and venues, offering visitors a chance to explore the rich artistic offerings across the town.

“The reason it is called Constellation is that WAF have not got tons of funding, but we wanted to make sure we delivered and used as many of the regular venues as possible. The trail is a collection of different artists and organisations and venues and partners that we worked with in the past, coming together, in a constellation.”

Sitelines Theatre also returns this year, as Ed told us.

“Sitelines is about taking unusual spaces and putting theatre into them. We have shows in cellars, and Lounge Gigs by an artist called Tom Adams, where you can call up The Hexagon and book him to come to your house! It costs £120 but if you get 15 friends, that's £8 each! And he does an hour-long show in your living room, or wherever you choose!”

Ed added that making the majority of the festival free and offering work in such a range of mediums was key in encouraging people to access art in their hometown.

“The thing that WAF is concerned with is: how do we get the highest quality art into Reading and make it accessible? Being free is an important element of that, and how we choose the work and how it is accessed and displayed is important as well.

“We will have the stuff at The Oracle, which people will not be able to avoid, but we also have interactive works at St Laurence's church. There is one piece where you put on a glove with a tape head on it and the wall has tape running along it, and you can make sounds by running your hand along it, so it's completely interactive. There is work that turns the contents of Reading museum into chocolate, so there's edible art; there is work where you can affect the art with the way you move... It's fun, friendly and really accessible.”

And for anyone with questions about the art, a gang of volunteers from Reading University and Reading College will be on hand to help visitors explore it further.

“We have a lovely group of volunteers for Reading College and Reading University. They are all given time to learn about and understand the work they are representing, to get to grips with it, so rather than having to read a piece of card on the wall about the work, people can ask them about it. It’s a much more visceral way of experiencing the work, and you can ask them questions, which you can’t do with a white piece of card. They can bring the work to life.

“We’re thinking about how we can enrich the cultural life of Reading. If you have not experienced something like this before you may need some encouragement to come, and we try to provide that by making it free, by making it accessible, by providing chances for people to explore it and find out about it online. Rather than an austere white cube environment, we are providing one where people can access the work and feel comfortable with it.”

Whitley Arts Festival runs from Friday, until Friday, November 15. For a full list of venues, events and the Constellation arts trail map, visit www.whitleyartsfestival.co.uk