Today's idea - Museums at Night: Late night museums, exhibitions, and open-air screenings

The South East's having a cultural revelation tonight as Brighton's Museums open up after hours for a special night as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. We're very pleased as it's in the same vein as the White Nights. The Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Brighton Toy Museum, Dream Home Exhibition, and the Artists' Open Houses are staying open until later and Jubilee Library Square's opening up for an outdoors screening of animated shorts. Horray! Exciting stuff and most of it for free!

The Brighton Museum & Art Gallery are inviting Brighton dwellers into the 'From Sickert to Gelet: Modern British Art from Boxted House'. For this night only you can explore these treasures of 20th Century artwork for free. Find a good review here and catch it from 10am-10pm.

The Brighton Toy and Model Museum's bringing old toys to life with "spectacular '0' and '00' guage train layouts in working actions. Starring a vast assortment of trains from all eras." I for one find that everything becoming at least 10x more exciting at night and have never been more excited about trains.

The Dream Home Exhibition's also taking part. You can find our Dream Home feature here. I'm excited about seeing this because it sounds fantastic and I've heard nothing but good things about it. It'll be open all weekend from 7pm-9pm. Find info at the Phoenix Gallery.

The Artists' Open Houses are brilliant and on late today too, as Brighton artists open up their doors and let people potter around their carefully designed pieces. It's free and occasionally provides cake depending on which house you're at. Find a guide to the routes and more info here, although we can't guarantee this cake business. On from 12-8pm.



Lastly for the second year as as part of the Fringe and Museum night, Kanoti proudly presents Bamboozled 2. Jubilee square from 9pm onwards tonight bring another night of "kick-ass animated shorts". Open air screenings and animated things, yummy.

A brilliant round up of late-night things. "It's really exciting how many Brighton venues are opening their doors into the evening over Museums at Night weekend. We're hoping that both locals and visitors will check out some of the cultural and heritage attractions on the doorstep!" says Rosie Clarke, who masterminds much of the event.

You can find the blog over at http://museumsatnight.wordpress.com

(Image via Peter Castleton)

Today's idea - Hammer & Tongue @BrightonFringe

A special Hammer and Tongue Festival Showcase today! The night sees beat-poetry come to Komedia and for this one month only they are "are deserting our regular formula and relocating from the Studio Bar to the Downstairs space at Komedia. BUT this is no idle show of grandiose pseudo-growth, for THIS month we are bigger and better than ever before!"

Hosted in inappropriately lascivious fashion by ROSY CARRICK and MIKE PARKER, with GIMLEY WHIPPLE conjuring tunes at every turn, tonight brings..

"SALLY JENKINSON - Sally is a poet who lives in Bristol, but she is from Doncaster, where they say poem like this: 'poym'

Eaves-dropping in bus queues, earwigging on bar stools, obsessively reading TV Quick despite being televisionless, and scrimping and saving for all the cider (yes, ALL the cider) are the main ingredients in her poem writing recipe process. The poems emerge like whirly, jumpy, lyricial peeks at the funny things people do, and they try to make space for tiny observations of the unusual and terrifying and magnificent things that go on between people everyday.

"Incisive, insightful and utterly delightful" [Apples and Snakes]


PETE THE TEMP - A stand up poet and a singer songwriter, since 2006 Pete has been performing his singularly high octane slap-stick poetry and musical comedy to consistently high acclaim. He has shared a stage with some of the biggest names in spoken word and comedy including John Hegley, Bill Bailey, Mark Thomas, Kate Tempest and Elvis McGonnagal. Beyond performance, he facilitates slam poetry workshops in schools and youth centres, and promotes and comperes events, as well as having recently launched Cabaret Clandestino in his home town of Oxford. This Spring Pete will be touring with Hammer & Tongue and throughout the Summer will be touring the festivals throughout the UK.

"A rabble-rousing one man riot of a performance poet!" [Poetry Kapow]

"His unbelievable energy seems the key to his success, with a powerful and funny physical stage presence. His material is engaging and ridiculous to the extreme. He makes you giggle, like a school girl who's just found out what a penis looks like." [Fringe Report]


RACHEL PANTECHNICON - A surprisingly alluring 40-year-old ingénue with a veritable cornucopia of verses, stories and observations, Rachel specialises in motivational poems for cats and for people. She is many things: the best-dressed woman on the poetry circuit; the woman who won the 2004 Glastonbury Festival Poetry Slam, although she only entered it for the experience (and was perhaps the only person on site wearing court-shoes); and the author of the well-known story-books about Cheesegrater Leg-Iron Lion. In short, a most peculiar talent.

“Technicolour suburban entertainment” [John Hegley]

“Rachel Pantechnicon of London was my favorite performer on the whole tour. Pure creative genius.” [Buddy Wakefield, US Poetry Slam Champion]"

Horray, but hurry to get tickets as they're incredibly popular anyway and the sounds of 'bigger and better' suggest bigger and better queues.

Cost: £5 (tickets in advance from Komedia box office)
Time: 7.30-11pm.
Location: Komedia
Facebook event page: here

Today's idea - Brian Eno's '77 Million Paintings' Exhibition (free)

Musician Brian Eno 'began his career as a visual artist and has always been interested in the synthesis of sound and image. 77 Million Paintings is an ever-evolving audio-visual installation that continues this creative exploration.' So today we recommend this Fringe exhibition - Jonathan's review describes it wonderfully:

"The cultural highlight was a trip to Brighton’s lovely Fabrica gallery, which for the duration of the Festival is hosting an exhibition by the season’s curator, Brian Eno. Rather misleadingly titled ‘77 Million Paintings’, the show actually focuses on one piece – a large, evolving graphic up on a large screen at the far end of the dark church.

The same aesthetic which drives much of Eno’s music is apparent in the work; it is neither instantly rewarding nor demanding, but instead a kind of slow, transformative experience for which the term ‘ambient’ (traditionally used to characterise much of Eno’s music) remains the best descriptive term I can conjure up.

It’s essentially a series of locked geometric shapes which move through a range of patterns and colours in a sequence determined by ‘generative software’ which is capable – as the title of the piece suggests – of 77 million possible permutations (which would take, apparently, over a thousand years to unfold). The transformations are slow but remarkably evocative.

Sat concentrating for ten minutes I was only dimly aware of perceptible changes, but when a conversation with Deb and Will distracted me from the screen for no more than sixty seconds and I returned my gaze to the ‘painting’, I found it had changed hugely. Such is the effect of the slow process of gradual change – I thought of the face of someone you love and see every day, which seems unchanging, and the shock of encountering friends with whom you’ve lost touch, and who you find much altered (as altered, presumably, as you are).

It’s hard to describe a work of art without showing it, and pointless to show a still of a work of art without being able to demonstrate the very movement which gives it purpose. So here’s a proposal, instead.

Imagine yourself sat in a church, half-dozing, glancing down at the cobbled floor. As the sun progresses slowly across the sky outside, light catches panes of the stained glass windows high above, and casts a reflection down on the floor in front of you. The light shimmers and shines, ducks behind a cloud, comes up for air. The quality of light changes, and different parts of the window are alternately obscured and revealed. What plays out on the floor in front of you is the combination of chance, nature and design, and it is playing only for you.

If you can imagine that, you might be able to picture Eno’s work. If you like the sound of it, the exhibition is running until the 23rd May.

Co-incidentally, I spent much of the time in the Church sharing a seat with Toby, a mischievous toddler who ultimately ordered me onto the floor so he’d have more space. He told me – and I trust his opinion – that the exhibition was ‘lovely’. He also made me take his socks off and at one point handed his Dad an empty food wrapper and yelled ‘rubbish, rubbish’.

I hope Mr. Eno wasn’t around, mistaking him for a high-voiced critic."


Cost: Free
Dates: 01 - 23 May 2010
Time: 12 noon-8pm throughout the Festival. Late night opening until 11pm on Sat 1 May and Saturday 15 May
Location: Fabrica
Map: here
Information: here

Today's idea - "Littlest Things" Tiernan Douieb @tiernandouieb

"Hello! Do you live in Brighton? Near Brighton? Wear Bright Clothes? Are not particularly Bright? Or just come from Hove which is pretty much the same place? Then come along to my solo show at the Royal Albion Hotel as part of the Brighton Fringe. It'll be a combination of a preview of my upcoming new Edinburgh show 'Littlest Things' and some proper jokes which actually work. Yey!"

Today Tiernan Douieb brings his solo show to the Fringe before he jets off to show it in Edinburgh. It sounds very good, aimed at twentysomethings, and as a side note, cheap. A good combination.

"You look lovely today. No, really. The smallest things we say can really make someone's day. As a professional small thing, Tiernan knows this well. Douieb’s second solo show exploring good nature, unsung heroes, just how dangerous ants are and why, on the whole, he’s a really shit friend. This show contains some thoughtful bits, and the term ‘Liam Kneesons’.

‘Infective enthusiasm - he is instantly likeable and his anecdotes are amusing and uplifting. A prophet for the generation of twentysomethings…’ – Three Weeks
“Clearly a natural comic...an inherently funny person” - AllTheFestivals.net
‘Hugely Charming’ – Time Out

Official Brighton Blurb: Words! Who likes words? Well, here’s some that have been cleverly put into sentences, 83% of which are funny, by ‘natural comic’ Douieb. A short diabetic bearded man shouting his mind at things he’s seen, done, thinks and has nearly been punched by.

‘Small in Stature, not in talent.’ – The Scotsman ‘Hugely charming’ – Time Out"

Time: 7pm
Location: Royal Albion Hotel
Tickets: here
Website: here
Facebook event page: here

He;s also just been named as one of the Top 50 Twitter feeds about Arts and Culture to follow, according to The Observer. Follow him @tiernandouieb