Brighton Festival mural makes its mark

Brighton Youth Centre with the mural created for Brighton Festival

Kate Tempest – poet, author and spoken word artist – led the festival as its guest director, and this year saw spectacular shows including woodland art installation For The Birds, as well as performances by Tempest herself.

Leaving the festival’s mark on the city, young people from Brighton Youth Centre created a mural under the guidance of local artist Sinna One.

The mural, which is on the wall of Coffee@33 on Trafalgar Street, was inspired by a piece written by one member of the festival’s ‘Storytelling Army’ who wrote about the kindness of people who buy her coffee.

The Storytelling Army – a partnership between the festival and theatre company Nabokov – will be back out in Brighton this weekend, working with people from all walks of life, including those who are homeless and vulnerably housed, who will tell their stories in unexpected locations throughout the city.

Fashion student Finley Marshall, who took the lead painting the mural, said: “I’ve lived here all my life and I love Brighton so much. I loved the idea of spray painting. There’s loads of graffiti work all around Brighton, and getting to be a part of it is really great. I really like the concept [of the Storytelling Army] that people are just going to start telling stories places.”

There was also a series of free events which brought a diverse line-up of music, dance, theatre and spoken word events to Hangleton and East Brighton, with the aim of making arts accessible to all.

Explaining the ‘Your Place’ events, Ms Tempest said: “I thought it was important that as well as having this very exciting, cosmopolitan festival happening in the city centre, with all this buzz and hype and all this energy that gets built up from people seeing something, spilling out on to the street, I wanted it to also represent the wider population of Brighton who maybe can’t afford to get in to the city centre.”

For more on the final Brighton Festival events this weekend, visit: brightonfestival.org

Brighton Fringe runs until Sunday, June 4.