A WHEEL on a street corner or handlebars on the seafront are all part of this year’s Harwich Festival of the Arts.

Organisers are planning a bicycle theme throughout event, coinciding with the Tour de Tendring and Women’s Tour cycle race in the town.

To start the festival, there will be a special performance featuring 111 cyclists riding through Harwich whistling and ringing bells.

There are also plans to place bits of bicycles around the town in unusual locations.

Artistic director Diana Burrell said donated bicycle parts would be like artworks put up around the streets.

“Howletts has helped us by giving us some of their redundant bits of bike for our bike-art project and we are delighted,” she said.

“We will be painting and reassembling parts of bicycles in unusual ways to make artworks, which we will place in unexpected places throughout the town during the festival period.”

Howletts bike shop in Kingsway, Dovercourt, staged the launch of this year’s festival leaflet, which gives details of more than 50 events during the festival from June 25 to July 6.

Organisers are also celebrating after being named in the top 15 art festivals by the Sunday Times.

Mrs Burrell added: “It is wonderful a festival run by volunteers has had recognition by the arts section of a respected Sunday paper and it feels as if we have now been put on the map.”