Photoworks Festival Propositions for Alternative Narratives attempts to rethink what a photography festival is and who it can be for. It can be experienced in three different ways; as an outdoor festival across Sussex, via our online festival hub, and through our ‘festival in a box’, a limited edition object where the audience becomes the curator and decides where and how to install it.

The ‘festival in a box’, offers an alternative model for curating, disseminating and interacting with a photography festival. It is portable, free from the limitations dictated by geographic location, physical space and time. Access and sustainability are central to this new model. The festival in a box eliminates a reliance on personal travel, which in itself relies on the eco­nomic privilege and freedom of movement of the individual. Instead, the artworks travel to you. When re­ceiving the festival in a box, you become the curator and an active participant in the festival. Each of the artworks can be installed on your own walls: at home, in your office, in a classroom, in a gallery, in a cafe or with your community. There are an infinite amount of ways in which you can install the festival.

Conceptually, the theme Propositions for Alternative Narratives attempts to give space to different ways of thinking about photography. Ideas which could be seen as an alternative to the mainstream narratives which so often dominate conventional photographic debate. We have organised our ideas from two entry points; looking forward to con­temporary practice and looking back at the historic. Envisaging the future of contemporary practice we selected eleven artists, focusing on the forthcoming generation, many of whom blur the boundaries between photography, performance, sculpture and moving image. They are Farah Al Qasimi, Lotte Andersen, Poulomi Basu, Roger Eberhard, Ivars Gravlejs, Pixy Liao, Alix Marie, Ronan Mckenzie, Sethembile Msezane, Alberta Whittle and Guanyu Xu. Each of these artists intentionally sets out to explore a nuanced perspective on a subject or topic.

Alongside engaging with the potential future of photography we also reflect on the medium’s past by commissioning texts for the festival in a box by Simon Baker, Lucy Soutter, Pamila Gupta, Julia Bunnemann, Shoair Mavlian and the group Queer History Now – all of which propose ideas for alternative ways of thinking about and discussing the history of photography.