| Brighton Festival | |
|---|---|
| Locations | Brighton and Hove, England |
| Years active | 1967–present |
| Website | www |
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Brighton Festival is a large, annual, curated multi-arts festival in England, first held in 1967. It includes music, theatre, dance, circus, art, film, literature, debate, outdoor and family events, and takes place in venues in the city ofBrighton and Hove inEast Sussex, England, each May.
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In 1964, the first moves were made to hold a festival in Brighton, and Ian Hunter, the eventual artistic director of the Festival, submitted a programme of ideas. This was followed by a weekend conference in 1965, and the board of the Brighton Festival Society was born. The inaugural festival was held in 1967, and included the first ever exhibition ofconcrete poetry in the UK, alongside performances byLaurence Olivier andYehudi Menuhin.
In the introduction to the 1968 Festival programme, Ian Hunter explained the original intentions of the festival: “The aim of the Brighton Festival is to stimulate townsfolk and visitors into taking a new look at the arts and to give them the opportunity to assess developments in the field of culture where the serious and the apparently flippant ride side by side.”[citation needed]
In 2016, the Brighton Festival celebrated its 50th year. The festival's biggest talking point was Nutkhut'sDr Blighty,[1] an ambitious, large-scale, free immersive, outdoor experience co-commissioned in partnership withRoyal Pavilion & Museums and14–18 NOW, which highlighted the story of wounded Indian soldiers hospitalised in Brighton during WW1. Ending each night with a spectacular light display using projection-mapping, Dr Blighty set the city and social media abuzz and drew audiences of almost 65,000 over its five-day run.
The festival regularly commissions new work from some artists and companies. The 2016 Brighton Festival featured 54 commissions, co-commissions, exclusives and premieres, including the UK premiere ofLaurie Anderson's uniqueMusic for Dogs,[2] a concert specially designed for the canine ear; the UK premiere ofLou Reed Drones,[3] an installation of Anderson's late husband's guitars and amps in feedback mode, which she described as "kind of as close to Lou's music as we can get these days",[4] a re-enactment of every onstage death from the plays ofWilliam Shakespeare from Brighton-basedSpymonkey andTim Crouch; andBlast Theory & Hydrocracker's immersive undercover police dramaOperation Black Antler.
In 2020, the festival was cancelled for the first time in its history as a result of thecoronavirus pandemic.[5]
Each year since 2009, the festival has appointed a guest artistic director.
this year's Brighton festival, which is guest-directed by author, broadcaster and former children's laureate Michael Rosen.
