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Worktable, which will be at Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts for Brighton Festival 2022. Image credit Kate McIntosh

An installation offering people the chance to smash household items and rebuild them in new ways will be part of the University of Sussex’s biggest-ever involvement in Brighton Festival this May. 

As a partner of the Festival, the University is proudly collaborating with Brighton Festival to present eight events, hosted at multiple venues including Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, the University’s arts centre. The events explore the cultural opportunities presented by the act of rebuilding society and asks the questions: what do we want to revive? And what should we smash up and reimagine anew?

Following a safe and successful return of England’s biggest multi-arts festival in 2021, this year’s Brighton Festival will take place as the final pandemic restrictions are set to lift and features a programme that focuses on the theme of Rebuilding.   

Syrian architect and author Marwa al-Sabouni and Tristan Sharps, Artistic Director of Brighton-based theatre makers  dreamthinkspeak  are Co-Guest Directors for 2022 – the first time two artists have collaborated to lead the Festival. Al-Sabouni and Sharps have paid homage to the artistic endeavour of tearing down norms to create something fresh in their Festival programming, celebrating the contributions of music, theatre, dance, circus, art, film, literature and debate in connecting communities within cultural landscapes.  

Brighton Festival events co-presented with Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts include: Worktable, an installation from Kate McIntosh that invites you to traverse a series of rooms, with the opportunity to smash up objects and rebuild them in new ways; Written in the Body, a poignant dance duet that explores a personal history of human touch – good and bad; 12 Last Songs, a live installation from artist ensemble, Quarantine, exploring our relationship to work, with Brighton residents paid to enact their various careers, from builders to hairdressers; and the UK premiere of Witness, a film installation by award-winning Brighton-based artist filmmaker Emma Critchley, which explores the human relationship to glacial landscapes through underwater dance, spoken word and scientific imagery.   

This year, for the first time, the University of Sussex School of Media, Arts and Humanities is collaborating with Brighton Festival on the Festival of Ideas. Building on the success of last year’s inaugural Sussex Festival of Ideas, the series of events, which will sit within the main Brighton Festival programme, looks to harness the transformative power of the arts and humanities to fashion new ways of thinking about the past, present and future.  

The Festival of Ideas 2022 events include: The Social Strike Game – participants are tasked with figuring out how urban groups and resources can co-ordinate to develop social struggle and bring about the end of capitalism; Making Space: Decolonial Interventions in Contemporary Art , a panel discussion convened by Susuana Amoah, University of Sussex Stuart Hall Fellow 2022, focusing on imaginative de-colonial strategies used by artists, curators and activists to address cultural inequity in public art institutions; a screening and Q&A with the directors of  I Get Knocked Down, a film based on anarcho-pop band Chumbawamba, featuring University of Sussex Professor of Collaborative History, Lucy Robinson, in collaboration with Vivienne Westwood’s Intellectuals Unite; and closing with Cultural Recovery, a panel debate taking a critical and imaginative look at the idea of a cultural recovery, featuring author Eliane Glaser, Sussex alumnus and Chief Executive of the Design and Artists Copyright Society, Gilane Tawadros and Dean of the School of Media, Arts and Humanities and Co-Chair of ABCD for Cultural Recovery in Brighton & Hove, Professor Kate O’Riordan, who will discuss what exactly culture needs to recover from and whether some things might be best left in the past.   

Andrew Comben, Chief Executive of Brighton Festival, said:  “The University of Sussex and Brighton Festival have enjoyed a close partnership since the first Festival in 1967. Now, in the University’s 60 th year we are delighted to be building on that relationship with an even richer set of connections via our collaboration on the University’s Festival of Ideas. We are enormously grateful for the vital support University of Sussex provides Brighton Festival as one of its Major Sponsors and proud of the statement it makes about the importance of arts and culture to one of this region’s principal institutions.”  

Professor  David Maguire, Interim Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex, said: “ In our 60th year, the University of Sussex is proud to be supporting the Brighton Festival. Through a programme that encapsulates kindness, inclusion and collaboration, the Festival not only echoes our values as a university but is also a celebration of what makes Brighton and Hove such a special place.  

"We are delighted to be contributing to the Festival programme with installations and performances taking place at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, and through a series of events curated by the University of Sussex, Festival of Ideas.”  

Full listing of University of Sussex events taking place as part of Brighton Festival 2022:  

Sat 7–Sun 15 May, 11am-8pm - Worktable by Kate McIntosh  
Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts 

Sat 7th, Sun 8th, Thurs 12th and Fri 13th May at 5pm and 7pm – Witness by Emma Critchley   
Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts 
For the UK premiere there will be ticketed screenings with the film’s spoken word soundtrack performed live in multiple languages. 

Sun 8 May, 3pm – Festival of Ideas: The Social Strike Game by Plan C’s Keir Milburn  
Friends Meeting House  

Monday 16 May, 7pm – Festival of Ideas: Making Space: Decolonial Interventions in Contemporary Art  
The Music Room, Royal Pavilion 
Organised in collaboration with The Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust, the Stuart Hall Foundation   

Wednesday 18 May, 8pm – Festival of Ideas: I Get Knocked Down   
Depot, Lewes 
Film screening followed by live Q&A with the directors  
Organised in collaboration with the Vivienne Westwood’s Intellectuals Unite 

22 May, 12pm–12am (BSL) - 12 Last Songs   
Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts  
Quarantine co-presented with Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts and caravan assembly 
Audiences can come and go as they please over the course of the day 

Tue 24 & Wed 25 May (BSL), 8pm - Written In The Body by Charlotte Spencer  
Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts  
Brighton Festival Commission Co-presented with Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts and South East Dance 
 
Thu 26 May, 5.30pm - Festival of Ideas: Cultural Recovery  
Professor Kate O’Riordan, Eliane Glaser and Gilane Tawadros 
Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts 
Organised in collaboration with Brighton-based arts organisation, Photoworks. Part of Third Thursdays and the ABCD for Cultural Recovery in Brighton & Hove. 

For the sixth year running, the University is also supporting Our Place, a free celebration of creativity in Hangleton and Knoll, East Brighton, Moulsecoomb and Bevendean with community art projects, performances and events being workshopped and taking place in the neighbourhoods.  

As part of the celebrations, Our Place will be hosting: an exciting programme of outdoor performances from Without Walls at Hangleton Park on the weekend of Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 May; a series of Super Saturday events at local libraries in partnership with Brighton and Hove Libraries and Best Foot Music and across the month of May the communities will be creating public artworks through the artist in residence programme.   

The Brighton Festival Programme 2022 launches on Wednesday 16 February at brightonfestival.org. The Festival will run from Sat 7 May – Sun 29 May 2022.  

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