Broadcast: News items

A wealth of talent from the University of Sussex will get a chance to shine in this year's Brighton Festival and Festival Fringe events. 

One particularly hot ticket involves the Mass Observation Archive, which is held at Sussex. 

In a sold-out event on 23 May co-organised by Dr Margaretta Jolly (Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research), the novelist and critic Margaret Drabble, author and barrister Philippe Sands QC and former Labour MP Oona King will share their diary entries for 12 May - the date 73 years ago to the day that saw the Mass Observation project set in motion. 

Margaretta will chair a panel in which the diarists will share observations recorded in their 24-hour diaries and engage in a wider discussion on how the individual voice has helped shape our collective history. 

Meanwhile, academics, other staff, students and alumni will be setting aside their day jobs or furthering their creative careers with an array of performances that include singing, acting, lectures and literature, music, comedy, guided walks and talks. 

• Dr Anna Stavrianakis, a Lecturer in International Relations, will be singing with 200-strong community choir Brighton City Singers. In "Walls of Sound", the choir will perform new music composed specially for the Fringe, as well as some popular and classical favourites.
  Sat 1 May, 7.30pm, St. Bartholomew's Church, Ann Street, Brighton. Tickets £8/£6. 
• Composer and Professor of Music Martin Butler is having three works performed as part of a lunchtime series of concerts.
  Tue 4 May Counterpoise, a quartet of violin, trumpet, piano and saxophone, will perform a programme including Suzanne's River Song. The event concludes with a music workshop involving work by research students from Sussex.
  Mon 17 May the Camarilla Ensemble will perform Down-Hollow Winds, a piece for wind quintet.
  Fri 21 May a cellist and pianist will perform Siward's River Song.
  1pm, Pavilion Theatre, New Road, Brighton. Tickets £8. 
• Drama graduate Alex Brown's theatre company All Said And Done - comprising former and current University of Sussex students - offers a new take on an epic tale of love and loss with Dido Craves, which combines physical theatre with text by the playwright Christopher Marlowe.
  Mon 10-Wed 12 May, 7.30pm, Cella @ The Santuary, 51-55 Brunswick Street East, Hove. Tickets £8/£6.  
• Professor of Ecology Mike Hutchings will be singing with Brighton Festival Chorus in two performances of Rachmaninov's Vespers.
  Fri 14 May, 6pm and Sat 15 May, 10pm, St. Bartholomews Church, Ann Street, Brighton. Tickets £15.  
• Performer and Life History MA student Susan MacLaine takes to the stage as a septuagenarian widower reflecting on a life lived and love lost in her self-penned one-man/one-woman show, All That I Was/All That I Am. The show is one of the Centre for Community Engagement-related Festival events.
  Tue 18 May, 8pm, Pavilion Theatre, New Road, Brighton. Tickets £4. 
• Anna Dumitriu is artist in residence in the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR) and a visiting lecturer at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS). She has been working with Varndean School pupils aged 12-15, who have curated an exhibition to celebrate the school's 125^th anniversary and its creative work with installations, performances, art work and archive material.
  Sat 22 May, 11am to 5pm, Varndean School, Balfour Road, Brighton. Tickets free. 
• David Kilkelly, a tutor in Media Production, is putting students' critical faculties to the test by getting them to produce reviews and previews of Fringe events. The resulting reports will be broadcast on Brighton community radio station, Radio Reverb (97.2 FM) throughout the Festival. 
• Sussex alumnus Tony Moss's 'Secrets and Lies' walking tour of Brighton offers an alternative view of the city and the incredible characters who have shaped its history.
  Every Sat and Sun in May, 11am and 3.30pm, Royal Albion Hotel, opposite Brighton Pier. Tickets £7.  

For full details of all performances at the Brighton Festival and Festival Fringe, visit the Brighton Festival and Brighton Festival Fringe websites.

Because the University of Sussex is an associate sponsor of this year's Brighton Festival in May, all staff can benefit from discounts and priority booking.