Dreamy Place returns to Brighton & Hove

Headsets at the ready, Dreamy Place, the arts festival celebrating creative technologies and collective experience, returns this October with six days of exhibitions, performances and events across Brighton & Hove.  

Designed to engage curious minds of all ages, and including mixed reality, games, dance, and music, the festival harnesses tech and play to explore some serious topics - including surveillance, the environment, philosophy, data, memory, and identities. Hosted in venues across the city, much of the programme is free.

“Since 2023, Dreamy Place has seen more than 50,000 visitors rediscover local heritage and engage with creative technologies in Brighton & Hove, Crawley, Bristol, and Chesterfield,” said Jamie Wyld, Director of the festival’s producers, videoclub. “We’d planned a scaled-back approach in Brighton this year, but Dreamy Place 2025’s packed long weekend of performances, screenings, exhibitions, and experiences is a testament both to the innovative approaches of our programme partners and the energy of audiences’ collective experience.

“Whether you’ve visited Dreamy Place before or not, we look forward to welcoming you and hope everyone experiences the joy of discovering something new and unexpected.”

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Dreamy Place Programme 2025

Anna Bertmark - Glittering Prospects  

Sat 25 – Sun  26 Oct (10am - 6pm)  

Meeting Place Café

FREE

An immersive listening experience exploring how lost artefacts buried beneath our feet reveal meaningful stories.  

This deeply atmospheric 20-minute audio drama by sound designer Anna Bertmark weaves together Brighton Beach's hidden histories, environmental mysteries, and the stories of those who search its shores. Inspired by cinematic interview techniques and found audio recordings, the piece presents a compelling fictional documentary drawing from the world of metal detecting and coastal folklore.  

A captioned version is available to watch via an iPad.

PATCH - push.to.play

Thu 23 Oct (8pm)

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts

£7/£5 concs.

Pay What You Decide tickets are available.

push.to.play is a celebration of the creative community at the University of Sussex, curated by student collective PATCH.

In the auditorium, experience an explosive live display of experimental music, visuals and performance from students and alumni, featuring sets from Robinson's Village, the ambient project of James Burns, electronic duo Noise Peddler, and sound artist and producer Furrowed, who will be joined on stage by Cederick Knox for an improvisation involving a grand piano and a live-cut record.

The Café Bar will host a DIY open-mixer sandbox, where you can play with some of the gear featured in the show.

This pilot event aims to provide a platform for University of Sussex students, staff, and alumni to collaborate with others and feel part of a community.  

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Symoné: Nullspace Motel

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts

Wed 22 Oct (8pm)

£7 / £5 with some Pay What You Decide available

Symoné: Highway to Infinity

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts

Thu 23 Oct (12pm – 5pm)

FREE, no booking required, just drop in.

Nullspace Motel blends live art, pole, and dance with philosophical mini-videogames in a fractured road trip through Ish’s memories. Onstage and onscreen intertwine like collage, inviting audiences to question identity, power, memory, and what remains unknowable within ourselves.

In Highway to Infinity, you’re invited into an interactive installation, in a philosophical and parallel story to Nullspace Motel. This single-player interactive narrative holds up a mirror to the audience’s own unconscious mind, questioning preconceived ideas around identity, memory, and the very fabric of reality. Glowing stacks of retro TVs and pulsing immersive sound delivered via headphones turn the experience inward. What happens when the screen looks back at you?"

Caroline Beavon - Glitch v.3  

The Skiff, 30 Cheapside, Brighton

Sun 26 Oct (7pm - 10pm)

FREE - Booking recommended

Step into a dimly lit space where layered projections shift, collapse, and respond to your touch.

Through a simple trackpad, you take control – moving through fragments of a nonlinear narrative about being othered, masked, watched, and reshaped.

As you scroll, the room seems to listen. Visuals distort. Audio bends. Characters surface from the gloom, drift alongside you, then disappear. This isn’t passive viewing – it’s an encounter.

You’re not just navigating, you’re in a moving story, feeling it stretch and snap back. Stay for five minutes or stay longer. Linger. Loop.

Judith Ricketts - Sensing Data: Memory in Place

Phoenix Arts Space, Window Gallery

Wed 22 - Sun 26 Oct (12 – 5pm)

FREE

Sensing: Data is an exhibition of work created by artist Judith Ricketts over the last seven years, focusing on data and the region’s built environment through its connection to early world economic histories of the transatlantic slave trade. The process to date has involved realisation, excavation, and the creation of artefacts.

Presented as part of Black History Month, this exhibition includes work carried out during the Phoenix Studio Award 2024 and CHASE-funded PhD research 2024.

Oska Bright Film Festival X Dreamy Place Outdoor Film Trail

The Lanes

Brighton

Sat 25 Oct (7pm - 8pm)  

FREE (booking advised)

Experience a unique cinematic journey with Dreamy Place as they present films co-curated with Oska Bright Film Festival - the world's largest festival dedicated to showcasing films made by, or featuring, learning disabled and autistic creators from around the globe.

Prepare for an unforgettable outdoor film trail through the vibrant streets of Brighton. Watch five captivating short films projected onto buildings and walls, as they guide you on a leisurely 1km walk through the city’s iconic streets.

This event is free and open to all. Simply meet up outside Food for Friends on Prince Albert Street - look for the team in hi-vis vests.

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Both Sides Now 10

Fabrica Gallery

Sat 25 Oct (7pm - 8pm)

Ticket price: £5

Curated and produced by videoclub (UK) and Dr. Isaac Leung (HK), Both Sides Now 10 presents a dynamic compilation of artists’ film and video works from the UK and Hong Kong.

With bold aesthetics and experimental approaches, the programme captures the diversity and complexity of our times, while remaining accessible, thought-provoking, and visually compelling.

From poetic reflections on digital identity to insightful examinations of power and national symbolism, Both Sides Now 10 offers audiences the opportunity to experience a rich spectrum of moving image practices.

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Play Back Forward

Hove Museum of Creativity,  

Thu 23 – Sun 26 Oct (10am - 5pm)

FREE

An invitation to engage with early film technologies through contemporary lenses, Play Back Forward is a playful, hands-on exhibition exploring the worldwide legacy of local luminaries such as George Albert Smith, Laura Bayley Smith, and James Williamson. The show weaves together archival films, creative responses by local young people, and new collaborative installations by artists Chahine Fellahi and Annis Joslin, opening up new ways of seeing, sensing, and making.  

Early film trickery meets contemporary experiments; analogue processes and digital play collide, past technologies echo visions of the future – creating an immersive space to investigate the city’s rich film heritage.

Press Play - Creative Activity Day

Hove Museum of Creativity

Sat 25 Oct (11am - 5pm)

FREE - drop in

Play with and reimagine the film archive with activities inspired by the Play Back Forward exhibition including optical tricks, experimental animation, zine-making and more plus workshops led by the exhibiting artists, Chahine Fellahi and Annis Joslin.  

Pell Ensemble - Hinterlands  

The Dance Space

2 Market Square, Circus St, Brighton

Sun 26 Oct (8 performances)

FREE - booking required

A mixed reality headset dance experience inspired by microorganisms called extremophiles living on the edge of habitability, in some of Earth’s most inhospitable environments.  

Hinterlands explore speculative futures of human evolution. Movement, spatial sound, and augmented reality create a space that unfolds differently for you and the dancer. Through an invitation to move, you will explore our entanglement with the natural and digital world and possibilities for surviving, evolving and becoming.

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Brighton Railway Station Tour

Sat 25 Oct (12pm)

£20 for tickets - all proceeds donated to MIND charity

Step behind the scenes of one of the city’s most iconic landmarks with a tour of Brighton Railway station led by Community Engagement Manager, Rob Whitehead.

Explore hidden areas such as the atmospheric Cab Road tunnel, normally closed to the public, as well as spaces around the station that reveal stories of its growth and transformation.  

From its grand opening in 1841 to the bustling transport hub it is today, the tour traces the station’s fascinating journey through time. Whether you’re a history enthusiast, a Brighton local, or simply curious about what lies beneath and beyond the platforms, this is a rare chance to experience the station in a whole new way.

Booking required — places are limited.

The Cab Road tunnel has been host to two installations for Dreamy Place in 2023 and 2024, and the station was the subject of Dreamy Place project, Underworld in 2025 - find out more here: www.underworld-brighton.com  

Marcel Top - Poison Data, Kill Algorithms talk  

POST, Brighton

Thu 23 Oct (5:30 - 7:30pm)

FREE

Belgian-London-based artist Marcel Top presents his recent project Poison Data, Kill Algorithms (2025), exploring the ethical and technical landscapes surrounding automated data collection and mass surveillance. Top’s work investigates how private companies collect and manipulate data for algorithmic training, and how “data poisoning” can be used to resist oppressive surveillance practices.

In conversation with Amin Yousefi, Photoworks Assistant Curator, Top will discuss his practice, layering research, documentary photography, and use of new technologies, including facial recognition, movement analysis, and deepfakes. The talk will explore the concept of manipulating datasets to disrupt extreme reliance on surveillance systems, highlighting questions of privacy, ethics, and citizen empowerment in a data-driven world.

This talk launches the first public programme at POST, the latest art-led venue in Brighton & Hove. Delivered with Photoworks.

Dreamy Place comes to venues across Brighton & Hove on Tue 21 - Sun 26 Oct 2025. Find more info and booking links at: www.dreamy-place.com

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