Brighton Festival

It includes music, theatre, dance, circus, art, film, literature, debate, outdoor and family events, and takes place in venues in the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England, each May.

The inaugural festival was held in 1967, and included the first ever exhibition of concrete poetry in the UK, alongside performances by Laurence Olivier and Yehudi Menuhin.

The festival's biggest talking point was Nutkhut's Dr Blighty,[1] an ambitious, large-scale, free immersive, outdoor experience co-commissioned in partnership with Royal Pavilion & Museums and 14–18 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 2016 Brighton Festival featured 54 commissions, co-commissions, exclusives and premieres, including the UK premiere of Laurie Anderson's unique Music for Dogs,[2] a concert specially designed for the canine ear; the UK premiere of Lou 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 of William Shakespeare from Brighton-based Spymonkey and Tim Crouch; and Blast Theory & Hydrocracker's immersive undercover police drama Operation Black Antler.