The August bank holiday weekend always hits a little different: yay, it’s an extra day off, but boo it’s the last one of the year and the countdown to the C word is officially on. But let’s not wallow when we’ve got a bumper bank holiday of fun (and sun?) ahead. We’ve already told you about 9 to 5 The Musical (particularly poignant this week), the return of hundreds of scooters for the Brighton Mod Weekender, the super-fun circus troupe that’s landed in town, and the 50-percent-off-food deal that’s happening at Mowgli this week.
That’s just for starters, though, there’s plenty more good stuff to get stuck into, including a slice of Chelsea in Sussex, huge beer and wine festivals, a drum and bass bike tour, terrace parties and a fair few birthday celebrations. Let’s go…
(FROM) FRIDAY
Drink your way around the world
The Independent pub by Queens Park is going big for the Bank Holiday with another one of its excellent booze fests. That means four days of beer, wine and music with over 30 beers and ciders on tap from breweries including Brighton’s Loud Shirt and Hand Brew Co., Cornwall’s Verdant, Dublin’s Whiplash and plenty from further afield, plus 18 mostly natural and low-intervention wines by the glass. They’ve got the music sorted too, with jazz, latin and afro beats on Friday, house on Saturday and The Mike Piggott Trio bringing gypsy swing and hot jazz on Monday.
Fri – Mon
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Reimagine Nirvana’s Unplugged
Nirvana’s legendary 1993 MTV Unplugged gig gets a rather radical rewrite at The Old Market this weekend. Emma Frankland’s award-winning No Apologies mashes up theatre, grunge, autobiography, mythology and an alternative version of the 90s, with a six-piece live band blasting through some of Nirvana’s best-loved songs. And Friday’s show has an extra treat for grunge nerds: Everett True – aka the music journalist who introduced Kurt Cobain to Courtney Love – is sticking around for a post-show chat.
Fri & Sat; 8pm; from £15
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Dig into Brighton’s occult past
Ley lines, witches, stone circles, alleged occult cults and the Satanic Panic: Strange Strolls is taking a walk through the considerably weirder side of Brighton history. The roughly mile-long Witchcraft & Magic Tour starts outside The Walrus and finishes near Edward Street, taking in the city’s first blue plaque honouring a witch along the way.
Fri, 6pm – 7.40pm; from £10
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Celebrate Carne’s first birthday
Carne turns one this weekend and it’s swapping quiet birthday dinners for disco at its Hove restaurant. Simon Van Os is on the decks with what the organisers describe as Hot ’n’ Spicy House, Delicious Disco and Fried Funk, with food and drinks running alongside the music until 1am.
Fri; 8pm – 1am; £8.30
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(FROM) SATURDAY
Grab a lobster roll in the vines
Last chance for a little Chelsea-in-the-Sussex-countryside action: Bluebird by the Sea has its final Rathfinny outing this Saturday. The food truck from Sir Terence Conran’s King’s Road restaurant is serving up lobster rolls, duck salads and burgers overlooking the gorgeous vineyard, with Rathfinny’s Sussex sparkling wines very conveniently available alongside. Saturdays don’t get much better than that.
Sat; 12pm – 5pm
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Try Japanese street food with a French-Norwegian twist
Chef Jes James is launching his new food concept Bad Sibling at Hooked in Kemptown on Saturday – and his influences come from three rather different directions. Expect Japanese-rooted street food made using French techniques with a bit of Norwegian influence, with familiar flavours, unexpected combinations and dishes designed for sharing. It’s the first outing for the intriguing concept and a one-night-only affair.
Sat; from 5pm
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Drink £5 pints for UnBarred’s birthday
UnBarred is turning a whopping 12 years’ old and celebrating with three days of draught beer for a fiver. Boysterous Burgers will be on food duty Saturday and Sunday, including a special Unbarred smash burger, while Saturday brings an hourly raffle from 4pm, with every beer bought earning a ticket for the chance to win a range of prizes, including a £100 bar tab and merch.
Sat – Mon; free entry
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See art being made – then buy it off the wall
Twenty-two artists are taking over Platf9rm at Hove Town Hall this weekend for Pepita Festival, a two-day art free-for-all presented by Pepita Coffee and Fatboy Slim. Artists will be creating work live on the walls, which you can buy there and then, alongside screenings of Iceman documentary Melt It, talks on AI and art, DJ sets and a drag performance. No gallery hushed voices required – and entry is absolutely free.
Sat and Sun; 11am – 6pm; free
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Boogie with the fishes
Sea Life after dark is already fairly enticing, but this Saturday you can add an LED headset and three channels of 80s, 90s and 00s tunes. The aquarium is hosting a silent disco night, with two sessions and DJs playing while you dance among the tanks (carefully planned so that the residents aren’t disrupted).
9.30pm – midnight; from £29.71
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Spend the day in wellbeing mode
Twenty people, a patch of nature, a full day of switching off and a bit of a dive in the woo-woo side of things: Eden’s Garden is taking over Stanmer Organics with guided meditation, conscious connection, frequency channelling and shamanic somatic movement, before finishing with an evening jam. Lunch, snacks and hot drinks are included; bring a yoga mat, pillow, mug and your own plate and cutlery – plus an instrument if you fancy joining in the jam later.
Sat; 11am – 8pm; from £45
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SUNDAY
Take part in a mysterious art experiment
How much do you like knowing what you’ve signed up for? The Society for Ancient Folklore Experiments is keeping almost everything under wraps for Project Kappa, a one-day participatory art experiment in East Brighton Park. Turn up and you’ll gradually be given instructions, meet strangers who become temporary collaborators and help determine what happens next. There’s no audience – everyone gets involved – and the day includes outdoor activities and a roughly three-mile walk. You can opt out of anything at any point, but otherwise, curiosity and a willingness to surrender to the unknown are the brief. We are definitely intrigued by this one.
Sun; from 10am; £16.96
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Follow the drum & bass bike
Pedal-powered party incoming! Dom Whiting‘s bringing his famous Drum & Bass on the Bike back to Brighton this Sunday. Rolling out – with some seriously big bass – from The Level on Sunday at 2pm, this is your invitation to join the (increasingly massive) gang that’s taking over the world. Wheels, feet, scooters, whatever, just turn up – with your own speaker if you like – and rave. Dom always brings the good vibes, so this is an absolute highlight.
Sun; 2pm; free
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Have a quack
Stalls, rides, tombolas, circus skills, and a dog show. Yep, the famous Patcham Duck Fayre is back with everything you’d hope for from a summer fete and more. Including ducks.
Sun; 11am – 4.30pm; free
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Make art with mushrooms
Put down the potato, the artists behind the Deeper Than Fungi exhibition are going to show you how to print with mushrooms at the Fishing Quarter Gallery. They’re hosting a free drop-in workshop that takes inspiration from traditional spore prints – made when a mushroom naturally drops thousands of spores onto paper – but swaps the spores for ink so you can create your own identifiable mushroom prints in considerably less than the usual three-to-12-hour wait. And if you’d rather just check out the exhibition that explores mushrooms through sculpture, drawing, film, sound and performance, it’s on until Sunday.
Sun; 12pm – 3pm; free
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MONDAY
Don’t mug this one off
Most comedy competitions promise glory. This one promises a mug. Manic Mugday sees a mix of amateur and professional comedians battle it out in front of a live audience at The Secret Comedy Club, with the winner decided by cheers measured on a ‘reliable’ Temu decibel meter. We reckon you’re in for an evening of big laughs, unpredictable sets and maybe even the chance to say ‘I saw them before they were famous’. (We did say maybe.) Even better, they’ve got a two-for-one-deal on for Monday. Cheap laughs indeed.
Mon; 8pm; from £2.50
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Get funky in a tiny room
Brighton six-piece Benji Green’s Rubber Band are bringing their psychedelic space-funk to the Folklore Rooms for a Bank Holiday Monday trip back to the 70s – via Pink Floyd, Radiohead and Mac DeMarco. You’re in for instrumental grooves, analogue effects and plenty of noodling of the good kind, with Arif Raihan’s alt-rock-meets-soul seven-piece and Cornwall-born, Brighton-based singer-songwriter Lizzie Hill along for the ride. And at £5 before fees, it’s cheaper than most Bank Holiday pints (apart from the ones at Unbarred – see above).
Mon; 8pm; £5.65
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GET OUTTA TOWN
Sweat it out under the full moon
Sauna, cold plunge, leaf whisking and a ceremonial shedding of all the shit stuff you could do without: Ditchling Wild Sauna is marking the full moon with a two-hour evening session of hot and cold rounds, scented steam, salt scrubs, intention setting and relaxation with tea and snacks included.
Fri; 7pm – 9pm; £25
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Rave before breakfast
Apparently 10am is clubbing time now. The Coffee Set is bringing its morning rave back to the beach, starting with a half-hour walk and chat before a live DJ turns things up for 45 minutes at Carats over on Southwick Beach. Last time they threw a sax player into the mix; this time the extra surprise is staying under wraps. And because no morning rave should happen uncaffeinated, every adult ticket comes with a free coffee or tea.
Sat; 9.30am – 10.45am; £12
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Go wild for the Bank Holiday
Into the Wild festival is back in the West Sussex woods for four days of world music, inspiring workshops, talks, wild crafts and general getting-away-from-it-all fun. The sprawling programme packs in three stages, hundreds of artists and more than 200 workshops, with everything from movement and wellbeing to nature and traditional skills happening around Chiddinglye’s pretty meadows, woods and giant sequoias.
Fri – Mon; from £71.50
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Turn trees into colour
Head out to biodynamic Haymans Farm in West Sussex for a natural-dyeing workshop that starts among the trees and ends around the lunch table (our kind of workshop) with dishes made from veggies grown right on the farm. You’ll start off by identifying plant material, then learn to prepare natural fibres and a dye bath, before coaxing out four different colours. And you’ll leave with heaps of dye swatches, a journal, and an accessory that you’ve naturally dyed yourself.
Sat; 10am – 3pm; £122.50
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Release your inner toy nerd
Got a cupboard full of old Pokémon cards you definitely don’t still look at? You’ll be among friends in Shoreham on Monday. The Toy and Comic Fair is filling the Shoreham Centre with new and pre-loved Lego, Transformers, Star Wars, WWE, Star Trek, Jurassic World, Pokémon and Ghostbusters goodies, plus appearances from familiar characters throughout the day. Get there from 9am for first dibs for £3, or sacrifice your chances of nabbing the best stuff and stroll in for free after 10am.
Mon; 9am – 2pm; from free
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What else?
Learn some traditional Chinese brush painting surrounded by the work of the person teaching you (Fri – Sun; various times; £33.22), take part in a community kirtan and sound bath charity fundraiser (Fri; 7.15pm; donations), fling out your best salsa moves as La Movida heads back to Bison Beach Bar on Saturday (8pm – 10.30pm; free), check out Brighton punk band Pussyliquor at a free gig at the Green Door Store (Sat; 6pm) or head out to Bolney to an afternoon of house, funk and spirits at the Spirit of the Downs distillery (Sat; 1pm – 5pm; free).
Photo credit: Mooncakepictures (Bluebird)
