England’s largest multi-arts festival, Brighton Festival 2024, begins this Saturday 4 May with a packed weekend of interactive installations and soundscapes, art exhibitions, theatre, dance and live music. This three-week, city-wide celebration reflects the belief of this year’s Guest Director, award-winning author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce, that finding hope, magic and wonder in the everyday can help us all imagine a better world.
On Saturday morning, more than 5000 school children from schools across Brighton and Hove will gather once again to parade through the streets with colourful floats and costumes for The Children’s Parade, marking the official opening of Brighton Festival.
Inspired by Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s chosen theme of ‘Dream Again’, artists from community-led arts maestros Same Sky have collaborated with students, teachers and volunteers to make magnificent sculptures, choreograph dance routines and compose parade chants, in an event that brings the whole city together.
Free events: string and slime
There are numerous free events happening across the three weeks of the Festival. From Saturday 4 May, the Royal Pavilion Gardens becomes home to free, interactive installation 100 Miles of String which runs for the duration of the Festival. Designed by local artists Leap then Look, participants of all ages are invited to weave and wind thousands of metres of string together to create a temporary, ever changing interactive artwork in the heart of the city.
At Phoenix Art Space, free exhibition Ooze Machines (4 May-30 June), from artist and scientist Dr Libby Heaney, combines unlikely artistic inspirations slime and quantum physics. Featuring ‘oozing’ glass sculptures, immersive multi-channel video, 2D works and a gaming experience, Heaney considers the sliminess of the body, other life forms and even the so-called slimy nature of big tech to offer a glimpse into the possible future of quantum technology, and the show is suitable for all the family.
Science and sound art
A free sound art exhibition, Neolithic Cannibals: Deep Listening to the Unheard (4-19 May), commissioned by Brighton Festival, has been created by artists and social activists Class Divide in collaboration with young people in Whitehawk and East Brighton. It is centred around a recreation of the Whitehawk Hill Neolithic Camp and invites audiences to discover the playfulness, joy and hope of contemporary East Brighton through a combination of soundscape, archaeology and activism.
Bird Bath (4-12 May) fills a church with spring birdsong from local nature reserves, creating a restorative space for everyone to stop, rest and soak in the sound; and Days of Wonder (4 May-1 Sep) celebrates the magic of early cinema, with an exhibition of new work inspired by the film and media archives of Hove’s Museum of Creativity.
Other free events include the UK Premiere of An Elevated Platform (4-26 May), an interactive installation where visitors take to a stage in front of an invisible crowd that will react to every movement, growing restless if not suitably entertained. Devised by choreographer Yael Flexer and installation artist Nic Sandiland, the experience mirrors the world of social media, where every action we make is both celebrated and scrutinised.
‘A bit of Brighton Bounce’
The return of Brighton Dome’s historic, newly refurbished Corn Exchange and Studio Theatre as core venues also allows for an expanded international programme of events, reflecting the city of Brighton and Hove’s belief in the arts.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce said: “This Festival is a chance for Brighton to share its fun, gags, bright ideas and beauty with the rest of the world. To give us all a bit of that Brighton Bounce. To give us hope. So come and see, or better still come and get involved.”
Brighton Festival takes place from 4-26 May 2024. You can find full details of all the events happening over the next three weeks, which include dance, classical music, theatre and film.
