Phoenix Art Space
Opening times: Wednesday – Sunday, 12pm – 5pm
For this year’s Youth Takeover, the main gallery at Phoenix Art Space is reimagined as a dynamic space for young audiences. Visitors can enjoy photography and sculpture by young people, a zine-making zone, doodle wall, sculpture table, and a relaxed social space.
Come along and see photographic work from Photoworks’ Queer Grounds, a programme of LGBTQ+ friendly creative workshops for young people aged 16-25, delivered in partnership with Phoenix Art Space. Also exhibited for the first time are sculptural works by young people aged 13-15 from the Russell Martin Foundation’s Extra Time Project, working with Phoenix Art Space created in response to Laura White’s Daily Baroque exhibition at the gallery.
Youth Takeover opening event – Saturday 15 November, 14:00 – 16:00
Join us as we celebrate the opening of the Youth Takeover! Grab a pen and join Brighton street artist Sinna One as we doodle on the gallery walls. Enjoy music from young DJs, plus drinks and snacks.
Youth Takeover is a creative programme at Phoenix Art Space led by and for young people aged 13-25.
About the Queer Grounds Programme
The participants of Queer Grounds invite you to explore the practices, spaces, and connections that sustain LGBTQ+ communities. The exhibition presents the creative explorations of participants in the Queer Grounds Programme. Through photography, sculpture, performance, and shared research, participants have explored how the language and processes of building can mirror the creation and sustaining of queer community spaces.
The works on display trace moments from the group’s shared process – staged self-portraits that play with ideas of shelter and gathering, and wooden tote boxes developed during a visit to the queer-led carpentry organisation In Our Hands in West Sussex. Each element reflects an ongoing enquiry into how building, both as structure and metaphor, can hold, support, and connect queer experience.
Queer Grounds is a free programme of LGBTQ+ friendly creative workshops for young people aged 16 – 25 led by photographers Eva Louisa Jonas and Kairo Urovi delivered by Photoworks in partnership with Phoenix Art Space.
The programme invites young people to explore how LGBTQ+ communities have created alternative ways of coming together that are rooted in care, community, and collective action.
Together they have looked at how projects like community gardens, art groups, walking collectives, and DIY spaces have emerged out of necessity, offering quieter alternatives to nightlife. The group considered how spaces take shape differently in cities and rural areas, and investigated what challenges or opportunities those settings bring for building and sustaining queer space.
Photography has been used as a creative tool to document, interpret, and reflect on these experiences, enabling participants to develop skills in visual storytelling and lens-based techniques.
