Wellness has had a bit of a branding problem in recent times. Expensive juices, beige yoga pants, and the idea that you can shop your way to inner peace. Meanwhile, the reality looks a lot starker: suicide is still the leading killer of men under 45, 40 percent of premature deaths in the UK are preventable, and long-term conditions eat up most of our health and social care budget.
Brighton Wellness Festival, landing here from 1st to 8th October, wants to rewire that story. Instead of glossy self-care for the few, the grassroots festival is pitching itself as “radical wellness for all” – a week of inclusive local practitioner-led workshops, talks, and playful experiments dotted across the city. All backed by inclusive coaches, trauma-informed therapists, social innovators, psychiatrists, and more.
The programme is sprawling with hundreds of events to choose from, but some of the standouts veer refreshingly off-script. There’s still mindfulness, breathwork, nutrition and yoga, but you’ll also find a zombie apocalypse playshop (how to find community at the end of the world), plus workshops on how to train your brain to be more zen, how to stop performing and discover who you really are, hands-on massage, and heaps more performance-led happenings designed to coax out creativity and wellbeing rather than just your tight hip flexors.
Running alongside the main festival is the BWF Summit, a one-day happening at Platf9rm in Hove (4th October) aimed at everyone from wellness professionals to anyone who needs a day to slow down and get some joy back in their life. It’s packed with panels exploring the future of wellbeing, like Old Medicines for Modern Wounds, which asks what ancient healing traditions the West has forgotten, and The Tides of Change, which digs into how the systems that make us sick could be disrupted. You’ll also find more playful, exploratory sessions, such as Colour Your Feelings, the bluntly titled Stop Having Sex, Start Having Pleasure, or a matcha Whisk & Taste workshop, alongside therapy experiences and an ethical marketplace curated by local changemakers.
Founder and local wellbeing leader Natasha Jackson says the festival’s aim is to “reclaim and redefine what wellness really means.” Which in Brighton – with its mash-up of grassroots activism, counterculture and sea-air hedonism – feels less like marketing and more like a natural next step.
Whether the festival can genuinely move the needle on accessibility and community health is a bigger question. But for a city that already wears its radicalism lightly, Brighton Wellness Festival feels like it might just stick.
Wednesday 1st October – Wednesday 8th October; from free; various times and locations
brightonwellnessfestival.co.uk
