About

ABOUT ART NIGHT

Art Night is a biannual contemporary art festival presenting ambitious work by artists at pivotal moments in their career. Developing within towns, villages and cities across the country, Art Night takes place in public spaces and civic buildings. The festival is free and everyone is welcome. We are rooted in the communities we work within and work in partnership with local organisations to both enrich existing work and bring meaningful new experiences to a wide range of audiences.

Our new model, as a national and biannual festival, takes place in towns, villages and cities in the UK. We champion the possibilities of decentralisation, working within communities to write their own narratives. We partner with local organisations to ensure our programme is rooted in place and we present critically excellent and experimental work by artists.

Art Night is an intersectional organisation: we are committed to diversity in all areas of our work including who runs the organisation, our artists, board, stakeholders and communities. We are particularly focussed on accessibility and work hard to ensure Disability is considered across all elements of the festival.

HISTORY

Since 2016, Art Night has commissioned 60 new artworks and attracted 300,000 live audiences, with an additional 3 million through touring, museum acquisitions and longer display. 10,000 participants have actively taken part in Art Night projects; these include estate residents, amateur dancers, choirs, young people from 30 different schools. We raised £3 million to invest in artists and the local economy through 150 funders and co-commissioning partners. Our commissioned work has toured nationally and internationally, across the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Canada. In 2021, Art Night expanded its reach to pilot a national festival, presenting work in 13 towns and cities across all 4 UK countries alongside an online programme.

Have look at our previous editions here.