In difficult times, arts and culture become more important than ever. In the face of the cost-of-living crisis and challenges across the sector, England’s largest multi-arts festival is finding ways to open up cultural experiences to as many people as possible in Brighton and Hove and beyond. Here’s how the organisers are doing it
“Community was inherent in the birth of the festival,” says Andrew Comben, chief executive of Brighton Festival. “If you want to celebrate the place, then you need to be working alongside the communities that inhabit it. The whole essence of making art is building relationships with people.”
This year’s guest director is the acclaimed children’s author, screenwriter and writer of the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony, Frank Cottrell-Boyce. His aim to infuse this year’s event with hope, wonder, magic and fun is also rooted in the festival’s community-focused ethos. “Frank is optimism on a stick,” laughs Comben. “He’s just the most fantastic, generous mind and wonderful communicator. We felt it was so needed to have that hopeful frame around the festival this year.”
While many festivals parachute in big names who come and go, the Brighton Festival team has made it a core mission to integrate and embed the community, and its local talent, into the programme itself. “We celebrate the opportunity to bring international artists to the city and to learn from that cross-cultural exchange,” says Comben. “But in the same way, we also champion work that is made locally, often by community participants.”
The whole essence of making art is building relationships with people
Here are five ways in which the community really does lie at the very heart of this year’s Brighton Festival.
As We Really Are is a new annual programme of short film commissions made in the spirit of the GPO films of the 1930s, such as Night Mail and Spare Time, documenting day-to-day life in the UK and celebrating the extraordinary in the ordinary. For 2024, artist David Shrigley turns the spotlight on Brighton Table Tennis Club (pictured), which Comben calls “the most joyful, moving and inspiring organisation that you can come across”. As pioneers of inclusion, they use table tennis to bring people from all ages, backgrounds and abilities together, breaking down barriers in the process. The films will put everyday people and everyday life front and centre, creating a place where the stars on screen are not actors or celebrities but members of the local community.
The Our Place project made its debut during Kae Tempest’s guest directorship in 2017 and this year it continues to evolve. This is a community partnership in which artists in residence work with community groups to create free art projects, performances and events. The focus is very much ‘with and for’ local people. “We wanted to develop a model where we were collaborating with communities and listening to what they wanted to do,” explains Comben. “To work out what their priorities and needs were.”
This year, residents of Hangleton and Knoll, East Brighton, and Moulsecoomb and Bevendean will produce art projects, performances and events to take place directly in their own neighbourhoods. These include creating artworks made from junk and recycled materials, an inclusive portable sensory play unit and supporting residents in their wish to develop local land for growing flowers, fruit and vegetables.
Image: Andrew Hasson
In Neolithic Cannibals: Deep Listening to the Unheard, local youth campaigners Class Divide are working with young people from East Brighton (pictured) on a sound installation inspired by one of Britain’s earliest Neolithic monuments. Fusing archaeology, psycho-geography, sound art and activism, the aim is to nurture young creative talent and amplify the voices of a group who often feel excluded from the art world. “Class Divide is an amazing organisation,” says Comben. “They really advocate for all children and young people and Neolithic Cannibals is a brilliant manifestation of that campaign. The arguments they make as Class Divide not only chime with the festival’s feeling about what this community can be, and ought to be, but they also highlight the importance of children and young people within it.”
Image: Curtis James
In May, the festival will include more of these than ever before, including Brighton People’s Theatre’s show Born and Bread, featuring a largely non-professional cast and hot soup for all. Alongside this is an annual partnership with Without Walls (pictured), offering free, family-friendly outdoor performances in Brighton and Crawley that span circus, puppetry and dance. “We’ve been really conscious of wanting to involve everyone from right across the city,” says Comben. “We’ve actively taken steps to make things affordable and provide free events to connect to community groups. Brighton is outwardly a very affluent-looking place but it has real areas of challenge, so we want to enable people from all parts of the city to get involved.”
“There’s something really special about 5,000 kids taking charge of the city streets,” enthuses Comben of the annual opening Children’s Parade. “And in watching them planting a flag basically saying: ‘here we are, this is us, this is our creative spirit.’” On top of the parade, which sees children collaborate with community art wizzes Same Sky to create sculptures, parade chants and dance routines for a mega-promenade through the streets, there are numerous other children’s events. These include 100 Miles of String (pictured), an interactive installation that invites children and adults to weave and wind miles of string, creating a shared artwork for the city. While AllStars Extravaganza from Brighton Table Tennis Club is a mass participation event for all that will see them attempt a Guinness World Record for the most consecutive players in a table rally.
Image: Leap Then Look
Brighton Festival takes place from 4-26 May. To find out more, visit brightonfestival.org
Main image: Jamie MacMillan
