©Hizzie Fletcher

Brighton Creative Stories

Five short films were made that celebrate the vibrancy, diversity and creative entrepreneurship that help define not just the creative sector but the city itself.

Brighton Creative Stories

Polly Gifford, ABCD Programme Manager 

What is it that makes the Brighton & Hove cultural scene so unique and how do we tell those stories?  The ABCD Plan for Cultural Recovery commissioned Brighton-based content creators Storythings to shine a light on the rich cultural ecology that makes up the city, through profiling creative businesses and the stories behind them.

Five short films were made that celebrate the vibrancy, diversity and creative entrepreneurship that help define not just the creative sector but the city itself.  Storytelling was key to the campaign that put creative voices front and centre.

The films feature Carolynn Bain and Afrori Books, Adam Joolia and Audio Active, Persephone Pearl and ONCA Gallery, Alli Beddoes and Brighton Digital Festival, and Tarik Elmatouwakil & David Sheppeard and Marlborough Productions.  They can all be seen on the Culture in Our City YouTube Channel and the Culture in Our City website. 

A common theme to the films is the story of Brighton’s connected creative community, and how it has played a part in the development of all the subjects.  Together, the films create a chain reaction of stories that celebrate the eco-system of Brighton and its brilliant creative community.

“When I first started out, the group that I’d say were just there, and are still there, is Women of Colour Brighton” says Carolynn Bain.  But this is a two-way street, as she goes on to say, “I love this city, the weirdness the quirkiness, who you are is just who you are, and because I love it I want it to do better and I want to be part of helping it to do better”.

For Alli Beddoes, “there is a lot of openness and community work that enables you to get stuff done…. You need a city that you’re proud of, where you feel that you belong, and a place where you can work and love to work.”

The public are an important part of the eco-system for Persephone Pearl, “The people of Brighton have shaped the work that we do because if we weren’t in dialogue with them, if we weren’t listening to people living here, we wouldn’t be showing work that people wanted or needed to see.”

“Brighton was this thing in my head that I wanted to be part of before I even got here” says Adam Joolia. Collaboration with others in the city made it possible for Audio Active to expand into a new space a few years ago, “… when we all clubbed together basically we got into something we wouldn’t have been able to do alone.”

I’ll leave the last word to David Sheppeard, “Brighton has a role in inventing the future of the culture of this country… it has an influence regionally, nationally and internationally and it should embrace that as a city, as an experimental space that allows and facilitates things to happen.”

If you resonate with these stories, please share them far and wide, and maybe be inspired to tell your own.