Brighton Digital Festival 2021

Bringing the city together to celebrate Brighton's high-level arts scene and innovative digital economy. With a mix of hybrid, in-person and online events, the festival is sure to appeal to everyone. Events range from small meetups, workshops and conferences to exhibitions, film installations and immersive audio, visual and VR experiences.

The key focus of the festival is to explore the issues that affect our daily lives, including climate change, the role of digital tech in a pandemic-struck world, education and the importance of equal access to the production, consumption and understanding of digital culture. 

The festival programme for 2021 has three strands - BDF Open Programme, the Core Programme and BDF Sessions. 

BDF Open Programme reflects the festival’s roots and core manifesto, to create an accessible and collaborative public space where individuals can help to collectively showcase and shape our digital creative future.The community-led programme consists of events submitted by individuals from Brighton and beyond to challenge digital culture and the ways in which we can change our future. Alongside new events, the festival will see the return of popular events such as ‘She Says’ Brighton. 

The core programme is created in partnership with Freedom Festival in Hull and Frequency Festival in Lincoln, produced by Lighthouse on behalf of Brighton Digital Festival which comprises five events commissioned by Digital Democracies. 

The BDF Sessions comprised of seven, one-off discussion masterclasses that cover a range of topical issues.

Brighton Digital Festival is also hosting a tech amnesty project, Tech-Takeback, to allow individuals to bring old, disused tech to be cleaned up and sent to charities supporting those in digital poverty. Anyone can bring their old tech to Lighthouse throughout the festival dates, which will be cleaned and updated and given to those in need of equipment throughout the Brighton & Hove areas.

Find details on all 50+ events and book your tickets on the events website.