Brighton Festival was once at the forefront of the UK’s outdoor arts scene.  Street theatre and site-specific shows were the jewel in the Festival’s crown. Total Theatre Magazine’s editor Dorothy Max Prior reports on the state of the art in 2026, as witnessed at Brighton Festival 2026.

Brighton Festival has a long history of support for outdoor arts and site-specific performance. The legendary Streets of Brighton programme, set within the Festival, was a beacon of light back in the early 2000s, joining Manchester’s Streets Ahead and Stockton’s SIRF in blazing the way for street theatre and other work sited outside of built theatre spaces to be taken seriously by funders and audiences alike. Some of my favourite memories of those halcyon days include extraordinary works by French artists like the sadly now defunct Compagnie Jo Bithume who had a penchant for hurtling through the crowd on big mechanical constructions, and the happily still operational Transe Express with their fabulous carnivalesque processions and  enormous (25-metre) mobile rig strung with swings and hoops.

It was also a time when British street theatre was moving up to dizzy new heights of excellence. See, for example, the Improbable Theatre/World Famous Company’s Sticky, which saw an extraordinary construction of sellotape animated by pyrotechnics; and Brighton’s own Periplum who, inspired by legendary Polish company Teatr Biuro Podrozy gave us large-scale dark and broody shows such as Arquiem, The Bell, and 451. During the Streets of Brighton festival-within-the-festival there were shows in every imaginable space in the city centre – on busy streets and squares, down dark alleyways, in the parks, on the beach, along the pier… Visiting companies included Avanti Display, IOU, Desperate Men, Dot Comedy, Mischief le Bas – I could go on. These were companies steeped in the traditions of street theatre; veterans of outdoor arts creation and performance. Add to this the inauguration of the National Street Arts Meeting, which took place during Brighton Festival, giving an annual rallying point and meeting place for the burgeoning ‘outdoor arts’ community. 

Then, there were the ticketed site-specific shows such as Frantic Assembly’s Dirty Wonderland, set in the deserted Butlin’s Ocean Hotel; or the many brilliant shows by Dreamthinkspeak, in sites that included Stanmer Manor House and the old Co-op Shop on London Road; or Red Earth’s wonderful collaborations with Indonesian artists Prapto and Parmin Ras, giving us beautiful ritual environmental performance set on Queens Park lake or in Stanmer Woods.

Glory days indeed.

So what’s the state of play for outdoor arts provision in Brighton Festival 2026? Sadly, it feels like pretty slim pickings compared to former glories – but there were some fantastic exceptions. Which we’ll get to soon, but first some reflection on the broader context.

The first thing to say, obvious but needs saying, is that times have changed. In the last decade, we’ve had Brexit and we’ve had a world-wide pandemic, which have both contributed to a major shift. There is less internationalism these days – less to-ing and fro-ing for artists and companies, who are currently facing farcical restrictions in both directions: expensive visas, rising transport costs, carnet nightmares making it horribly difficult to move equipment from one country to another, and more. There are also growing environmental concerns, with some companies, producers and bookers keen to avoid shipping large numbers of people and hefty amounts of equipment across continents.

Also, in Brighton’s case specifically, key movers and shakers in the outdoor arts scene have moved on. Zap Arts have disbanded – with legendary producer Veronica Stephens now gainfully employed as executive director of Out Theatre Festival, which over the past decade or two has risen to become one of the leading lights of UK outdoor arts, Yarmouth now leaving Brighton at the starting block. 

Where are the new producers, directors and animateurs willing to work alongside Brighton Festival to prioritise outdoor arts and site-responsive performance? Where are the programmers at Brighton Festival keen to make this work a jewel in the crown for the Festival, as it once was?

Priorities would seem to have changed for Brighton Festival, perhaps nudged along by the Arts Council #LetsCreate policy (sic, with that horrible hashtag and no apostrophe) initiated in 2020, which has prioritised projects that frame the public as art-makers, insisting on ‘co-creation’ as a necessity for all funded projects, rather than leaving the artists to do what they do best – make art, which may or may not include community engagement. Speaking as someone who, for two decades, made community-engaged art and outdoor performance with Ragroof Theatre (later, The Ragroof Players), and who continues to work in this field as a solo artist, I feel – as I know many of my fellow artists do – that those of us who are experts at creating work that engages communities should be encouraged and funded to do so; but insisting everyone does it has created a situation where artistic excellence – art for art’s sake – has been somehow decried and devalued; and where people who have no desire to make community-engaged work are forced into doing so by the box-ticking nonsense that is the current Arts Council funding application process. But as I type that final sentence, news comes in to my inbox: in response to the Hodge report that criticised the current ACE policies, it has been announced (28 May 2026) that Arts Council England are abandoning #LetsCreate, which supposedly had another four years to run, with new funding criteria to be announced soon prioritising ‘quality’, chief executive Darren Henley saying that ACE is ‘committed to supporting artists, organisations, museums, and libraries to create excellent work for everybody everywhere.’ Well, let’s hope that works out!  

But whatever which way the future manifests, the days of the big and bold outdoor shows by companies steeped in the street theatre tradition seem to be over – for Brighton Festival, anyway. I miss those enormous, spectacular shows – and although I also love the smaller and more intimate work, I worry that few of the companies who really understand larger-scale outdoor arts are getting funded and programmed. 

Also, a reflection on where the work is sited. This year, very little of the outdoor arts work in Brighton Festival was presented in key sites in the centre of town – again, I suspect the funding criteria of ‘accessibility’ (which is often, these days, interpreted as reaching communities that might not otherwise engage with the Festival) dictating the trend to push work to sites outside of the centre such as Moulescoomb and Hangleton. If people won’t come in to town to see the work, then let’s take it out to them. I understand the logic, but I also miss the buzz of a city centre brought to a standstill by art and artists taking over the streets with high quality outdoor arts work.

And this year there really is very little presence for Brighton Festival in the town centre – the more commercial ventures that are part of Brighton Fringe such as the North Laine Brewery’s upstart Speigelgarden, and the embarrassingly awful Fringe City street busking, being all there is in the whole central zone of the city for most of May. ‘Festival? What festival? Oh, you mean those beer gardens?’ is a common cry from taxi-drivers and day-trippers.

One exception to this is the opening event, The Children’s Parade, presented by Same Sky – an off-shoot of the legendary Welfare State International, which was led so magnificently by John Fox (RIP) and Sue Gill. Inspired by the mother company, Same Sky create a themed procession featuring samba groups and marching bands, and a sea of sculptural structures built from hazel-wood withies and tissue paper. Each year there is a theme – this year it was ‘books’ – and the city’s schools and community organisations take on, with training and support for teachers and leaders, the making of the structures and the organisation of a processional troupe. Oh what a joy to see hundreds and hundreds of children and teenagers take over the city centre streets and seafront for a few hours on the opening Saturday of the Festival. I did my time as a parade maker and organiser (for Brighton Steiner School) and nowadays I am a mere observer – although this year my grandson took part for the first time, so I was there alongside St Nicolas C of E School cheering on their excellent Paper Dolls display and marching band. I am far from the only person in the crowd to have been involved in some way or another for the past three or four decades! The Children’s Parade – like Same Sky’s other main event for the winter solstice, Burning the Clocks – is a much loved Brighton institution. Long may they continue to stop the traffic!

I’d also like to raise my hat to Ivan Morison and Heather Peak, the creators of Soft Machines, a public artwork installed on Hove Promenade, which set out to ‘explore the bodies that make a city, and the plurality of, intimacy and desire between them’. Well, I don’t know how much of that came through, but here was something that was artistically interesting, sited in a prominent place, and which provoked reactions of all sorts from the public – for, against, unsure, puzzled, angry, delighted. 

The piece consists of a number of enormous vaguely humanoid figures, which sit on the promenade, day and night. In some lights, at some angles, and depending on the mood of the observer they are friendly giants, threatening monsters, eery Wickermen, or benign beings from another dimension. They are made out of what appears to be straw but on closer inspection is found to be a rigid mix of organic vegetable material and plaster. Small children pat them delightedly, dogs sniff them happily, cyclists and rollerskating teens whizz past them, older walkers pause to take a breath and ponder. ’Only in Brighton,’ people say with a smile. Local Facebook groups are full of commentary. For every ‘What the hell? Is my council money going on this?’ (er, no actually) there are a dozen replies along the lines of, ‘Well, I like them – they brightened up my day’. Public art of the best kind. Commendations to Brighton Festival for programming this one. A success!

Over now to the more regular outdoor arts programming. Brighton Festival is part of the nationwide Without Walls consortium of festivals, and nowadays that means that the whole of the Festival’s outdoor arts offering is two weekends of the shows chosen and presented by Without Walls. All very well and good, but it’s not enough! We need more! We need Brighton Festival programmers with a genuine interest in, and knowledge of, the outdoor arts sector to get stuck in with commissioning and programming of additional work, rather than just relying on the Without Walls programme.

The Festival also needs to take the outdoor work as seriously as the indoor theatre programme. The flyer given out of ‘Free events at Brighton Festival’  doesn’t bother to credit the artist and company names. A friend of mine phoned the Festival box office to ask for show times for one of the shows, Holy Dirt, and was told it wasn’t a Brighton Festival show – perhaps she should try the Fringe! Finding this hard to fathom, I called the next day to test the system, and got the same response. No, they have never heard of this show. I must mean the Fringe! Just because a show is ‘free to audience’ that shouldn’t mean it is devalued in this way. It is disheartening, as seeing outdoor arts as some sort of lower-grade community add-on to an arts festival is something we all fought hard against for many years. The shows are commissioned and paid for as part of Brighton Festival’s programme and all the Festival staff should be on board.

But on to the work itself. The first Without Walls weekend takes place in Moulescoombe, and features the fabulous all-female circus troupe Daughters of the Wire with Elevate Her – a ‘joyful, defiant and beautiful celebration of female camaraderie and sisterhood’ which I reviewed last year when it premiered at Out There Festival. There was also a piece by Becca Gill’s Radical Ritual, called Tender Exchange, which I was sad to miss, having witnessed her work at Inside Out Dorset 2025.

The second weekend is at Blackrock, an empty seafront lot close to Brighton Marina, outside of the town centre. There is no ‘passing trade’ – you’d only be here if you had planned to be here – which I think gives the work a different vibe. It’s theatre that happens to be sited outdoors, rather than street theatre. It’s a rather odd choice as a site. One stage is right next to the No Fit State circus tent. Another is a bit of a walk away, next to the Volks Electric Railway stop, making it a bit congested. I did try to see Talawa Theatre Company’s Fragments of Us, which features an all-Black all-male cast exploring identity through dance and spoken word, but found myself at the back of a crowd that was a confusing mix of people trying to see the show and people trying to get to the ticket office for the railway, or to the nearby toilets, and it was impossible to see anything other than the occasional elevated body. So I gave up and headed to the grass bank next to the road and car park where there were two performance sites, and awaited the next show. 

Here, Thingumajig Theatre present Kismet Walla, a gentle puppet-theatre work performed on and around a very beautiful rairi – a painted cart that provides both set and props. The two-man team, who tell the story, puppeteer, and manipulate props with skill and charm, work wonders overcoming the challenges of the site. For much of the show, their gentle soundtrack and storytelling is threatened by the loud ‘warning, vehicle reversing’ bleeps of the coaches backing in and out the car park entrance which the company are (mysteriously) placed right next to. The story told is of a South Indian odyssey as a boy grows to be a young man, embarking on a long train journey, meeting and losing his first love, and learning that people with names like ‘Ali’ or ‘Hussein’ are different to him, and need to be placed in separate train carriages – a very soft introduction to the politics of the Indian sub-continent that nevertheless hits home. No need for hammer-to-the-head polemics! The props include beautiful painted banners of wonders witnessed in the landscape passed – market stalls heaving with fruits! Luscious plants and trees! Elephants! – and a very lovely miniature train that circles the cart. A delightful show, performed with elegance and assurance by a company that have a longstanding and well-deserved good reputation for bringing puppetry outdoors.

Ferdinando + Bernstein’s Stick and Stone is a joy and a delight – which is perhaps a little surprising as it’s about climate breakdown and the awful fact that we have lost 50% of all wild things in recent human history. But hope and love are centred, along with the notion that every small positive action helps. We have choices! Let the grass grow! Leave the insects alone! Outdoor arts aficionados will be familiar with the two artists as the mainstays of veteran street theatre company Strangelings. Flick Ferdinando also worked for years with John-Paul Zacharini and later embarked on a solo career – but has now reunited with former comrade David Bernstein. And it is good to see them back together, for sure! Dressed in Pagan chic robes, carrying bundles of sticks, staves, and stones, they enter the space and give us a delightful hour of tomfoolery mixed in with some folkish songs singing the praises of various flora and fauna, and the occasional earnest speech about the loss of biodiversity. There’s lots of two-way jousting, a drum solo from Flick, and a classic clown swat-the-fly routine from David – although said fly becomes a Christ-like icon displayed on a banner held aloft, an homage to the beauty of all life on earth. Close to the end of the show, there’s a lovely scene where audience members are invited up to bear sticks and aforementioned banner and form a tableau of environmental solidarity and resistance. Great stuff!

Over the road, wedged between the No Fit State Circus tent and the car park, overlooking the beach, is a dance stage that plays host to Holy Dirt, created and performed by Vidya Thirunarayan with Dale Wylde as this season’s second performer; directed and designed by David Glass, with a soundtrack by James Foz Foster. And what an exhilarating ride this is, as Vidya – channelling the Hindu goddess Shakti (the Divine Feminine) – wages war on the patriarchy, on economic oppression, and on the mounting inequalities of the climate crisis. Her tools are clay, sand, water, stones, and of course her physical body, acting out her strength and her resistance. Feminine yes, passive and ladylike no – Vidya and her foil (animus, angel, devil, oppressor, liberator – performed with humour and sensitivity by Dale Wylde) work, play, battle, dance, flap their wings, rage against the machine – and make a magnificent mess. Foz’s soundtrack features foley and electronic sound, eerie voiceovers from a Big Brother type character (‘Do not do that!’ ‘Start work now!’), and a plethora of unusual instruments from around the world, creating haunting drones and seductive melodies, with a touch of humour in the inclusion of Chinese and Indian renderings of Disney classics. An unusual take on the notion of  World Music! This is the show’s second year, with plans to tour to many other countries. Holy Dirt is an odd amalgam of Vidya’s  Bharatanatyam Indian Classical Dance style, the classic mime and physical theatre of David Glass, and the strong interest in creating a visual theatre of striking imagery from both key artists, all held together by Foz’s excellent soundtrack. Somehow, against the odds, it all works beautifully!

Also part of the Without Walls programme is Chair! a new piece by Geraldine Pilgrim, who has made such a fantastic body of site-responsive work over the years: taking over whole empty buildings  such as the Midland Hotel at St Pancras; animating working buildings such as the East End’s Toynbee Hall or Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion; and creating work like immersive dance piece Handbag! with community participants. 

First to say: here comes another gripe about choices around site at this year’s Brighton Festival. The piece is about the disruption of our urban environment; a plea for a return of public seating and the occupation of public space, in an era when more and more outdoor space is hard to access – fenced off, or made inhospitable. It would have been wonderful to have seen this set in a busy town centre square; creating a genuine disruption of public space. As it was, it was sited on a pedestrianised quadrant in front of South East Dance’s venue, the Dance Space. It’s in a new-build backstreet with very few passers-by, so it feels an oddly dead space. 

That aside, Chair! is a delight; a clear premise well-executed by the cast of community performers recruited for the piece. There’s a parallel with Geraldine Pilgrim’s Handbag, which saw a team of community dancers enter a space one-by-one, each taking their spot and making the moment their own as they grooved along. Here, the performers again enter one-by-one, but each with a chair, which is set down and sat upon. Some have books, some have knitting, some play chess. One finds a whole tea-set in a wheelie bin and proceeds to have a refined afternoon tea; another extracts an easel and set of paints from the bin. All are making the statement that public space belongs to us all, and can and should be used. There are some empty chairs in the space and audience members are encouraged to come and sit, too. Which I do, happily. Eventually, the square starts to empty out as a pair of wardens cum street cleaners encourage people to leave, taking away their paints or chess set or tea service. Some of us resist, refusing to go – winning the artist’s approval for our resilience. Like all the other shows I’ve seen in this year’s Without Walls programme, this is a gently politically piece that manages to make an important statement without pounding the audience with polemic.

Talking of gently effective political work, a word finally about a show that wasn’t part of the free outdoor programme – it was indoors and ticketed – but a site-responsive work of the sort I’d love to see more of in future Brighton Festival programmes. Bristol-based In Between Time, in association with Brighton’s own Dreamy Place, brought an immersive sound and light installation to the dark and dank old cab run under Brighton Station. Indeed, right under the train tracks. We Are Warriors has at its heart a wonderful soundscape created with the voices of over 100 women, girls, and non-binary people. I think I was expecting a more regular spoken-word piece, but no – it’s a fabulous blend of spoken, sung, whispered, and breathed vocals; mixed with all sorts of beautiful sounds, including humming drones, percussive taps, and echoey top lines. Some sections are choral, some are solo vocals. Sometimes what is being said or sung is audible. Sometimes it is sub-voce, like a voice from a dream that haunts you in your waking hours, as you try to grasp on to its meaning. The soundscape plays on a continuous loop.

As we enter the space, we are invited to take or make a small light (teeny bulb, pin, battery) and when we feel ready, to place it anywhere we like in the space, dedicating it to someone who has been lost or silenced. I go in the early days of the installation, yet already walls and floor are filling up with the little lights. I nurse mine for a long time, listening to two full cycles of the soundscape, before placing my light on a metal post, and slowly leaving. What a wondrous experience!

More of this sort next year, please, Brighton Festival.

Featured image (top): Ivan Morison and Heather Peak: Soft Machines on Hove Promenade, Brighton Festival 2026

Brighton Festival ran 1-25 May 2026. See www.brightonfest.org 

Without Walls: https://withoutwalls.uk.com/ 

In Between Time: https://inbetweentime.co.uk/ 

Geraldine Pilgrim: https://www.geraldinepilgrim.com/