Registration open for Brighton and Hove’s Artists Open Houses festival

Brighton and Hove’s Artists Open Houses festival, the largest of its kind in the UK, has announced the dates of a new extended Winter Festival for 2020.
Brighton Open Houses 2020Brighton Open Houses 2020
Brighton Open Houses 2020

The Artists Open Houses Winter Festival will take place over weekends from November 21 until December 13 2020. Artist registration runs until closing on August 28.

Spokeswoman Pandora George said: “The new four-week festival will amalgamate the annual Christmas Festival, in addition to showing work from many artists and makers who were scheduled to exhibit at the May 2020 festival, which was cancelled due to the coronavirus.

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“Alongside the main AOH Festival will be a new Virtual Open Houses strand, which will include virtual tours of artists’ houses and studios and online galleries. The Virtual Open Houses strand will continue online from November until March.”

Judy Stevens, festival director, added: “We are delighted to be announcing a new four-week Winter AOH Festival after the necessity of cancelling the May Festival this year. Many AOH artists have found the lockdown period very fruitful, allowing time to explore new ideas and ways of working - many have produced really exciting and inspiring new work.”

Festival weekends are:

November 21-22

November 28-29

December 5-6

December 12-13

The Artists Open Houses festival has also called on participating artists and makers to take part in a project to make non-surgical masks for the public to buy.

With the wearing of face masks mandatory in shops and supermarkets, a dazzling array of masks can be seen and brought direct from the artists.

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More information on the available face masks can be found at aoh.org.uk/facemasks/

Information on the festival and registration can be found at www.aoh.org.uk or by emailing [email protected].

Brighton and Hove Artist Open Houses, the originator of the Open House movement, date back to 1981 when an artist from the Fiveways area of Brighton, Ned Hoskins opened his house to the public to view his work and that of a group of friends. Other artists in the area followed suit to form the Fiveways Artist Group. The idea proved popular and soon Artist Open Houses sprung up all over the city.

The Artist Open Houses festival is now the largest event of its kind in the UK. Around 200 houses and studio spaces across the city open their doors for the main festival in May and around 60 open during the Christmas festival. Over 2,000 artists and makers share their work and homes each year.

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