The Sussex Festival of Ideas is a dynamic and engaging programme of events, talks and activities from the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities. This platform was developed to connect students, academics and the community to harness the transformative power of the arts and humanities, and its potential for fashioning new ways to think about the past, present and future. This year’s celebration has been curated based on the theme of New Dawn, and we are delighted to share our exciting 2025 lineup.
The 2025 Festival programme comprises a week of on-campus student-led activities between 8-11 April and seven events showcasing Sussex research as part of the Brighton Festival in May.
Tuesday 8 April, 10am - 5pm
Camera Rolling is a compelling video anthology showcasing short films by young women in Nepal. Developed in a participatory filmmaking workshop, they illuminate personal journeys, struggles, and achievements of these young women. The event features a screening where viewers can examine the transformative role of storytelling in shaping identity and fostering social change.
Wednesday 9 April, 12pm - 2.30pm
Join artist/academic/archivist Erin James in a hands-on workshop exploring The Archive - who it’s for and how we can reclaim it. Through zine-making, writing, collaging, playlist-making and more, we’ll transform memory into creative rituals of self-historicising. Open to all - no experience needed. Bring an object, text, or photo to engage with, or simply come as you are!
Thursday 10 April, 12pm - 5pm
Have you ever wanted to know more about what life is like living with a specific disability? Are you fascinated by different discourses/art forms? Do you want to be proactive in creating a more accessible, diversity affirming world? This exhibition invites you to delve into the realities of several disabled students, staff and alumni through an immersive array of poetry/prose, tactile artefacts and audio-visual media.
Thursday 10 April, 7pm - 9pm
Does fashion have to be shaped by designers alone? This panel discussion brings together women from various sectors - design, marketing, and production - to explore their impact on the industry's future. Followed by a designer showcase and Q&A, this event is an inspiring look at the innovative movements redefining fashion today.
Friday 11 April 10am - 5pm
Join us for a reggae-fuelled day of full-body dancing and collective art-making with recycled materials. Let’s warm our bodies, hearts and souls up altogether in time for Spring, using the loving, uniting spirit and big bass of Reggae music to guide us! Enjoy local artists’ work, Djs, a free wisdom-full zine, and more. Let’s be united by sound and creativity!
Sunday 4 May, 7.30am - 10am
Following the sell out success of Bird Bath events in 2024, we invite you to join us on International Dawn Chorus Day for an early morning sound walk through Stanmer Park and an ecosocial breakfast at the Ecomusicology plot.
Thursday 8 May, 5pm - 6.30pm
This exhibition invites you into the world of sight impaired artists and their experiences of Wakehurst’s wild botanic garden in the heart of Sussex. Immerse yourself in a soundscape composition, feel along a tactile forest crafted with foraged nature, and meet the artists in a Q+A. You will leave inspired to think and feel differently about ‘nature’.
Thursday 8 May, 7.30pm - 9.30pm
Join the University of Sussex and Museum of Youth Culture to explore Britain’s rave history through the ‘Post-Rave Britain’ Archive. Contribute your object or image to reflect rave's impact on culture, society, and politics over the last 30 years.
Thursday 15 May, 6pm - 8pm
This event will focus on the ways in which the People of Brighton and Hove have responded to threats from the far right in the past and imagine the ways in which communities can come together to oppose the Far Right in the future. Given the rising tide of populism in the UK, Europe and America the need to understand these dynamics has seldom been more pressing.
Sunday 18 May, 11am - 5pm
Come and discover how to use simple computer coding to make music! At University of Sussex, we’ve been researching live coding since its inception: we perform, write code, create new software and design new machines. Come along to this unique taster session at the legendary Volks Club on the seafront.
Monday 19 May, 8.15pm - 11pm
Starting right at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Pan-African idea is a story of new beginnings that resisted, and eventually defeated, economic, social and cultural domination by European colonial empires. Within this DJ salon Nzinga Soundz, one of the UK’s first Black female sound systems, and Martin Evans will play selected tracks and discuss how the Pan-Africanist movement was expressed in song.
Friday 23 May, 7.30pm - 9pm
As part of their Stuart Hall Foundation Fellowship, the intermedia artist Bleue Liverpool collaborates with musician/sound artist Ibukun Sunday to create an audio-visual intervention with the Meeting House Chapel. The duo will composite the metaphysical abstractions of University of Sussex alumni Paul Gilroy with research into marginalised narratives and landscapes of the English Channel coastline port culture.
If you have any questions, email festivalofideas@sussex.ac.uk.