Last modified on Wed 14 Apr 2021 01.31 EDT
Last year was one of cancellations, postponements and digital reinventions, but this summer many arts festivals are hoping to go ahead. Most are planning an adaptable, hybrid format, with socially-distanced live shows alongside online content. Tickets are often sold with Covid-proof guarantees of refund or rollover, but check before you buy.
Brighton festival and fringe
Artwork, part of Brightonâs pier-to-pier sound installation
Interactive art in the Pavilion Gardens, dancing in the streets and a pier-to-pier sound installation will span 14 miles of pebbly beachfront from Brighton to Worthing. Brightonâs month-long live arts festival is followed by its fringe programme. The festival offers distanced lunchtime concerts at Brighton Dome, an otherworldly night-walk around Shoreham port and a lantern-lit trail with choral music and light sculptures through Stanmer woods at dusk. This yearâs guest director, the poet Lemn Sissay, has helped schedule nearly 100 shows and installations. One of several world premieres is Tenebrae: Lessons Learnt in Darkness, a moving all-day spectacle inspired by the past year, at Brightonâs reopened Theatre Royal. And thereâs a multi-sensory woodland from mid-May in Olafur Eliassonâs immersive The Forked Forest Path under the Fabrica galleryâs Regency church beams, and a fake-news-era War of the Worlds at Worthing theatre.