Brighton Festival

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The Brighton Festival is an annual arts festival which takes place in the city of Brighton and Hove, England, UK each May. It was founded in 1966, and is the largest multi-art form festival in England.^[1] The 2006 festival orgainsed over 200 events during 23 days which were attended by over 500,000 people.^[2]

The festival includes organised processions such as the Children's Parade, outdoor spectaculars often involving pyrotechnics, and a great deal of theatre, music, literature and visual arts in venues throughout the city, some of which are brought into this use exclusively for the festival.

An unusual feature of the festival is the Open Houses concept, whereby artists and craftspeople literally open up their houses for the public to come and view or buy their work.

The Brighton Festival Chorus was originally formed in 1968 to perform a the Festival and other local arts companies such as Same Sky have grown alongside Brighton's Festival. The Festival regularly commissions new work from companies like DV8 Physical Theatre and Frantic Assembly; 2006's Festival included the world premiere of new work by Stomp's Brighton-based creators, Yes/No Productions. It also encourages cross-fertilisation between different art forms, such as 2006's "Stories In Motion", a collbaoration between Chuck Palahniuk, Irvine Welsh and Orbital's Phil Hartnoll; also 2006's "Warp Moves", a collaboration between Random Dance and artists from Warp Records.