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Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts

The University of Sussex has today (Thursday 23 February) been announced as the official Higher Education Partner for the Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival 2023 – the annual celebration of arts, culture and creativity taking place in the city.  

This is the first time the University has been recognised as the Higher Education Partner and builds on the role that the University has played in previous years in bringing academic expertise to the Festival through curated arts and culture programming and in facilitating community arts learning and engagement. As part of the partnership, University of Sussex students will also be participating in the Festival through internship opportunities and the chance to attend a unique ‘How to run a festival’ masterclass. 

This year’s Festival programme will include four events co-delivered with University of Sussex Festival of Ideas, at multiple venues across the city and a further nine Brighton Festival events on campus, co-presented in partnership with Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA), the University’s arts centre. 
 
As part of this, the Festival’s Guest Director Nabihah Iqbal, will appear at two events at ACCA: a Glory to Sound event, where she will be in conversation with award-winning broadcaster Anita Rani to explore her life and the power of music; and with an experimental collaboration SUROOR, that brings together four artists to consider themes of heritage, society, alienation and oppression through music, film, poetry and performance.  

For the second year running, the University’s School of Media, Arts and Humanities will also be collaborating with Brighton Festival on the 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 University of Sussex Festival of Ideas 2023 events include:   

• The Live Archive, hosted by Erin James, the most recent recipient of the Stuart Hall fellowship at the University of Sussex, encompasses a radical reimagining of archival research through poetry and performance;  
• Gardens, Botany and Histories of (De)Colonialism, taking the Royal Pavilion and Garden as their starting point, Rob Boyle, Head Gardener at Royal Pavilion Garden, and University of Sussex Professor of South Asian History, Vinita Damodaran, will explore the remarkable relationships between botany and colonialism; and 
• Music for Girls, which will take the form of a panel of artists, writers and listeners for an afternoon of conversation and activities exploring collective music histories and lost memorabilia. 

 In addition to the Festival of Ideas, the University of Sussex is once again supporting Our Place, a free programme of creativity, which takes place in the Brighton and Hove neighbourhoods of Hangleton and Knoll, East Brighton, Moulsecoomb and Bevendean. This year the programme will see three Artist in Residence projects, which will culminate in artworks to be showcased across the city in May, covering themes of cultural diversity, identity and community.  

Professor Sasha Roseneil, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex, said: 

“I am delighted that the University of Sussex has been announced as the official Higher Education Partner of the Brighton Festival, a major cultural highlight, not just for Brighton but for the whole of the UK. 

“Here at the University, we are committed to creating opportunities for our communities – on and off campus – to engage with the Festival and with the arts more broadly. 

“This will be my first Brighton Festival as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex, and I am very much looking forward to experiencing all that the Festival has to offer, both at our wonderful on campus arts centre, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, and across our vibrant city.” 

Andrew Comben, Chief Executive of Brighton Festival, said of the partnership:  
“After collaborating over many successful years, we are delighted to announce the University of Sussex as our official Higher Education Partner. We are excited to be building on our relationship with an even richer set of connections, especially via our collaboration on the University’s Festival of Ideas. We are enormously grateful for the vital support the University of Sussex provides Brighton Festival and of the proud statement it makes about the importance of arts and culture to one of this region’s principal institutions.”  
 
Its appointment as the Festival’s Higher Education Partner further reinforces the University’s commitment to regional arts and culture and builds on its partnership with Towner Eastbourne, including as the Education Partner for the #TurnerPrize2023

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