Bristol Photo Festival

Landmark office building to become a BPF Hub

Posted on October 1, 2026October 3, 2026 by BPFTest_Admin

Welcome Building®, near Temple Meads will host five international exhibitions, including a tribute to the late Bristol-based photographer Martin Parr, as Bristol Photo Festival returns from Wednesday 14 October to Sunday 15 November 2026 for its third edition with the theme of Time Machine

A floor of Welcome Building®, a new multi-award-winning workplace at 4 Glass Wharf in Bristol, is set to be transformed into a free public gallery this autumn, inviting visitors into the building in the heart of the city’s business district.

As one of the main exhibition hubs of Bristol Photo Festival 2026, the office building will welcome members of the public alongside its usual workplace community to the international biennial, hosting exhibitions, talks, tours and events.

Among the exhibitions will be Common Sense, presented as a tribute to the late Martin Parr, one of Britain’s most influential photographers and the inaugural artistic director of Bristol Photo Festival.

Originally created using inexpensive colour photocopies, Parr’s project challenged conventional ideas about how photography should be exhibited and will now be shown in the distinctly unconventional setting of a contemporary Bristol office building.

Welcome Building® will also host Maria Lax’s series, Stray Sod, exploring folklore, storytelling and uncertain landscapes, and Photo Kegham curated by Kegham Djeghalian Jr, drawing on the archive of Gaza’s first commercial photography studio founded in 1944 by his grandfather, Kegham Deghalian Sr.

The unusual venue has been made possible through a collaboration supported by Bristol BID, bringing together Bristol Photo Festival and partners from the city’s commercial property sector. The partnership is designed to open up spaces that would not normally be used for public culture, while creating closer links between Bristol’s business and creative communities.

Sabrina Shutter, Senior Project Event Manager at Bristol BID, says of the collaboration: “Bristol has an incredible creative community and a thriving business community, and we want to create more opportunities for those two worlds to come together.

“Welcome Building® is a brilliant example of what can happen when we look at corporate spaces differently. By helping connect Bristol Photo Festival with businesses and property partners, we can unlock new places for culture, bring extraordinary art to new audiences and give people another reason to explore this part of the city.

“We hope this partnership encourages more businesses to think creatively about their spaces and the role they can play in Bristol’s cultural life.”

Welcome Building® will also host the Festival’s opening event from 6–9pm on Wednesday 14 October 2026, alongside guided tours and a three-day masterclass with Magnum photographer Olivia Arthur.

Andrew Clarke, Vice President, UK Office Development at Trammell Crow Company, explains: “Welcome Building® has been designed as much more than simply a place to work, so we’re delighted to see part of it transformed for Bristol Photo Festival.

“Opening the building to a major cultural event is a fantastic opportunity to welcome new people into the space and connect those working here with Bristol’s wider creative community. It demonstrates how modern workplaces can contribute to the life of the city around them, and we’re looking forward to seeing the building take on an entirely different character during the Festival.”

Across Bristol, the wider Festival will feature exhibitions at Arnolfini, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol Cathedral, IC Visual Lab, Centrespace Gallery, and Redcliffe Caves.

Highlights include Joy Gregory’s Catching Flies with Honey at Arnolfini, Akshay Mahajan’s People of Clay and Sheida Solemani’s Persistence Studies at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, and George Hallett’s Home & Exile at IC Visual Lab.

The Festival’s opening week will also include artist talks, curator tours, workshops, live music and the Time Machine Festival Symposium at Arnolfini on Friday 16 October 2026.

Alejandro Acín, Director of Bristol Photo Festival, says of this year’s edition: “Time Machine brings together artists and curators whose work reminds us that the present is never singular. Every photograph carries traces of multiple temporalities, memories that continue to shape us, histories that refuse to disappear and futures that remain open to possibility.

“At a time when cultural organisations across the UK face significant challenges, this edition is also a testament to the power of collaboration. It has only been possible through the commitment of artists, funders, partners and communities who believe that this festival can help us better understand the complexity of the world we inhabit.”

The 2026 edition follows Bristol Photo Festival’s 2024 event, which attracted more than 115,000 visitors across venues throughout the city.

Welcome Building® exhibitions will be free to visit and open 12–6pm Thursday to Sunday, during the Festival.

Disneyland, Tokyo, Japan, 1997. Martin Parr

Time Machine: Festival Symposium – Full Schedule

Posted on September 24, 2026September 24, 2026 by BPFTest_Admin

Our one-day symposium will bring together artists from across the festival for a day of lively discussion, unpacking the ideas behind the exhibition programme. Speakers will include: Natasha Christia, Kegham Djeghalian Jr, Joy Gregory, Anna Jornet, Akshay Mahajan, Liu Hsing Yu, Annie Wang, and others.

The symposium is a unique opportunity to hear leading voices from across the photographic world, together in the same room. Throughout the day there will be opportunities for audience questions and the chance to informally meet the artists.

The symposium is co-presented with the British Journal of Photography, FOAM Magazine and the University of the West of England.

TICKETS

Tickets are available to buy via our partner Headfirst.

Tickets are available at an Early Bird price of £20. As the event approaches, the ticket price will increase to £25.

If you are a current University of the West of England you will receive a 40% discount. A valid student ID will be required upon arrival at the symposium.

BOOK TICKETS

SCHEDULE

10am – 10.20am – Introduction
Brief intro by Bristol Photo Festival (Alex & Ben)

Brief intro by UWE (Jacqueline Butler)

10.20 – 11.00 – talk one – Alternative Histories of Photography Sergio Valenzuela escobedo, Annabelle Lacour and Christine Eyene moderated by Alejandro Acín

11.00 – 11.15 – Coffee break

11.15 – 11.50 – talk two – Akshay Mahajan in conversation with Julia Carver

11.50 – 12.30 talk three – Yuko Edwards & Kelly O’Brien in conv with Diane Smyth

12.30 – 13:10 – LUNCH

13.10 – 13.45 – talk four – Natasha Christia & Anna Jornet in conversation with Alejandro Acín

13.45 – 14.25 – talk four – Kegham Deghalian Jr in conversation with Petra Mansour

14.25 – 14.40 – Coffee break

14.40 – 15.15 – talk five – Liu Hsing Yu & Annie Wang in conversation with Diane Smyth

15.15 – 16.00 – talk six – Joy Gregory in conversation with Shawn Sobers

In collaboration with:

Time Machine: Festival Symposium – Full Schedule

Posted on September 18, 2026September 29, 2026 by BPFTest_Admin

The symposium is co-presented with the British Journal of Photography, FOAM Magazine and the University of the West of England.

TICKETS

Tickets are available to buy via our partner Headfirst.

Tickets are available at an Early Bird price of £20. As the event approaches, the ticket price will increase to £25.

If you are a current University of the West of England you will receive a 40% discount. A valid student ID will be required upon arrival at the symposium.

BOOK TICKETS

SCHEDULE

10am – 10.20am – Introduction
Brief intro by Bristol Photo Festival (Alex & Ben)

Brief intro by UWE (Jacqueline Butler)

10.20 – 11.00 – talk one – Alternative Histories of Photography Sergio Valenzuela escobedo, Annabelle Lacour and Christine Eyene moderated by Alejandro Acín

11.00 – 11.15 – Coffee break

11.15 – 11.50 – talk two – Akshay Mahajan in conversation with Julia Carver

11.50 – 12.30 talk three – Yuko Edwards & Kelly O’Brien in conv with Diane Smyth

12.30 – 13:10 – LUNCH

13.10 – 13.45 – talk four – Natasha Christia & Anna Jornet in conversation with Alejandro Acín

13.45 – 14.25 – talk four – Kegham Deghalian Jr

14.25 – 14.40 – Coffee break

14.40 – 15.15 – talk five – Liu Hsing Yu & Annie Wang in conversation with Diane Smyth

15.15 – 16.00 – talk six – Joy Gregory in conversation with Shawn Sobers

In collaboration with:

Opening Week: Full Schedule

Posted on September 16, 2026September 24, 2026 by BPFTest_Admin

The opening week is packed full of talks, tours and special music events.

Here’s a cheat sheet to help you plan your week and share with friends: DOWNLOAD SCHEDULE

WEDNESDAY 14 OCTOBER

6-9pm | Launch Night | The Welcome Building
Free / PWYC | Booking required |

BOOK TICKETS

Join us from 6-9pm at the Welcome Building (Avon Street BS2 0QF) where we will be launching 5 exhibitions:

– One of Many: An Alternative History of Photography (Group exhibition)
– Stray Sod by Maria Lax
– Photo Kegham by Kegham Djeghalian Jr
– Common Sense by Martin Parr: Festival Tribute
– HEAT (Group exhibition in collaboration with the Magnum Foundation)

To mark the launch, we have organised two special in-conversation events, including musical contributions:

First, Christine Eyene (Curator of George Hallett: Home & Exile) will be unpacking the legacy of South African jazz musicians who lived in exile during the apartheid years, sharing rare recordings alongside portraits taken by George Hallett. Following this, Maria Lax will be in-conversation with the festival’s curator, unpacking the Irish folk tales behind her exhibition Stray Sod. Music programmer David McKeown will join Maria, playing rare folk songs to accompany her images.

THURSDAY 15 OCTOBER

4–6pm | Exhibition Tour | Martin Parr Foundation → Arnos Vale Cemetery
Free | Booking required | See Martin Parr Foundation website for booking details
At Martin Parr Foundation, curator Isaac Blease will lead a tour of the exhibition Dark Tales, exploring the relationship between British documentary photography and the gothic tradition. Following this, we will head to Arnos Vale Cemetery where artist Michel Campeau will introduce his exhibition Darkroom, which is staged in the Anglican Chapel Crypt.

FRIDAY 16 OCTOBER

10am-4pm | Festival Symposium | Arnolfini, BS1 4QA
£20–25 + student discounts | Booking required

BOOK TICKETS

A full day of artist talks and in-conversations bringing together leading voices from across the festival programme. Speakers include Natasha Christia, Kegham Djeghalian Jr, Joy Gregory, Anna Jornet, Akshay Mahajan, Liu Hsing Yu and Annie Wang, with conversations ranging from Palestinian history to queer representation in East Asia.

4.30-6.30pm | Exhibition Opening | Redcliffe Caves, BS1 6SR
Free | No booking required
Join us for the opening of No Pasarán by Natasha Christia, Julián Barón and Anna Jornet. Marking the 90th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, the exhibition brings together three Spanish artists whose work explores how histories and symbols of the past continue to shape contemporary Spain.

5-8pm | Exhibition Opening | Arnolfini, BS1 4QA
Free | RSVP
Celebrate the opening of Joy Gregory’s landmark exhibition at Arnolfini, bringing together more than 150 works from across her career. Since the early 1980s, Gregory has challenged expectations of photography and explored questions around Black British and feminist representation.

BOOK TICKET

8-11pm | Opening Music | Arnolfini, BS1 4QA
£10–15 + student discounts | Booking required

BOOK TICKETS

We have invited three of Bristol’s most compelling live artists to develop new performances for the opening of the festival. The line-up includes: Jabu + Memotone, Dan Johnson & Anushiye Yarnell, and Regina Collage. The night will also feature projections of photography from across the festival programme.

SATURDAY 17 OCTOBER

10am-5pm | Exhibition Walking Tours | Multiple venues
£6-12 + student discounts | Booking required

BOOK TICKETS

Explore the festival with our curators, visiting a selection of exhibitions across Bristol and hearing directly from some of the artists involved. Two separate tours are available, covering different venues and exhibitions. You can attend the morning, afternoon or both.

Morning Tour | 10am–12.45pm | Bristol Museum & Art Gallery → Bristol Cathedral → Arnolfini
Meet at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery to explore Persistence Studies by Sheida Soleimani and People of Clay by Akshay Mahajan. Continue on to Bristol Cathedral for Holly Lynton’s Beyond the Bounds, including an artist conversation with Christiane Monarchi and Gordon Macdonald, the editors of Hapax Magazine. From the cathedral, we will head to Arnolfini to view Joy Gregory’s Catching Flies with Honey.

Afternoon Tour | 2–5pm | Centrespace → Kit Form → IC Visual Lab → The Welcome Building
Starting at Centrespace with Family Times by Annie Wang and Liu Hsing Yu, the tour continues to Kit Form for Inherited by Yuko Edwards and Kelly O’Brien, then IC Visual Lab for George Hallett’s Home & Exile. Finish at The Welcome Building where there will be 5 exhibitions.

SUNDAY 18 OCTOBER

2–4pm | Exhibition Opening | Kit Form
Free | No Booking Required
Join us at Kit Form for an informal Sunday gathering celebrating the opening of Inherited by Yuko Edwards and Kelly O’Brien.

BOP Bristol – Books on Photography | Martin Parr Foundation
Taking place across the opening weekend, BOP Bristol is the city’s annual photobook festival, organised by Martin Parr Foundation. Discover photography books, publishers and artists from Bristol and beyond.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CITY

BOP BOOKFAIR
17 & 18 Oct 2026
Paintworks

The book fair is held across the Paintworks Event Space and Martin Parr Foundation. Publishers, photographers and photobook sellers join us from across the UK, Europe and further afield to showcase the latest work happening in the photobook community.

BOP PROGRAMME

DOWNLOAD OPENING WEEK CHEAT SHEET

(Feel free to share this around with those who might be interested)

Common Sense by Martin Parr: Festival Tribute

Posted on September 16, 2026September 30, 2026 by BPFTest_Admin

First presented in 1999, Common Sense is one of Martin Parr’s most ambitious and influential photographic projects. Bringing together images made across the world, the series turns Parr’s close, saturated and often humorous gaze towards the details of everyday life. From food and fashion to souvenirs, animals and consumer goods. Using a 35mm camera, ring flash and macro lens, Parr developed a distinctive visual language of fragments, surfaces and punchy colours, allowing seemingly insignificant details to build into a larger portrait of contemporary life.

The radicalism of Common Sense, however, extends beyond the photographs themselves. Parr deliberately rejected the conventions of photographic exhibition-making, presenting the work through inexpensive colour Xerox prints, a technology more commonly associated with everyday office and commercial printing than with the display of contemporary photography. By embracing a process designed for speed, repetition and circulation, the exhibition questioned the status of the photographic print as a precious object and opened up new possibilities for how photography could be reproduced, exhibited and distributed.

This radical approach continued through the exhibition’s unprecedented international dissemination. Rather than being conceived as a single exhibition in one place, Common Sense was designed to circulate simultaneously across the world. In April 1999, it was presented in 41 galleries across five continents, with 44 venues in total hosting the work during March, April and May. It was recognised as the largest simultaneous photography exhibition ever organised.

Common Sense therefore operates not only as a body of photographs, but as an experiment in mass visual communication.

This exhibition is also a tribute to Martin Parr, who served as Artistic Director of the first edition of Bristol Photo Festival and remained a member of the festival’s Board until 2025, making his contribution to the festival’s development and vision a crucial part of its history.

Bio

Martin Parr was born in 1952 in Epsom, Surrey. He is one of the best-known documentary photographers of his generation. Having published over 100 books of his own and edited another 30 in his lifetime, Parr built a long-lasting legacy.

Parr also acted as a curator. He curated two photography festivals, Arles in 2004 and Brighton Biennial in 2010 and was the artistic director of the inaugural edition of Bristol Photo Festival in 2021. In 2016, he curated the Barbican exhibition, Strange and Familiar. Parr became a member of Magnum Photos in 1994 and was president from 2013 to 2017. In 2013, he was also appointed the visiting professor of photography at the University of Ulster.

Parr’s work has been collected by many of the world’s leading museums, from Tate in the UK to the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He established the Martin Parr Foundation in 2017.

In collaboration with:

Supported by:

The Prison Mobile Library

Posted on September 16, 2026October 1, 2026 by BPFTest_Admin

The Prison Mobile Library is a participatory project produced by IC Visual Lab that brings together writing and photography created by people in prison, reflecting on life before, during and after incarceration. Through creative workshops, participants explore their experiences, memories and hopes for the future, creating original work to be shared with others across the prison system.

Within prison, there are limited opportunities to collectively reflect on personal experiences and the journeys that have led to incarceration. The project creates a space for shared reflection and learning, using photography and writing to open conversations, build trust and break down barriers.

The workshops encourage participants to consider the events, relationships and patterns that have shaped their lives, while developing greater self-awareness and understanding of their own journeys. Through making and sharing, they can revisit their personal stories and consider how they might be understood differently.

The resulting works form a unique library authored by people with first-hand experience of imprisonment—an archive of personal voices and lived experience. Rather than defining people solely through incarceration, the project creates space for more complex narratives to emerge, exploring how creative practice can support reflection, connection and transformation.

The exhibition presents a selection of publications from the library alongside material documenting the creative process undertaken during the workshops.

This project has been supported by Weston College, John James Bristol Foundation, and the Van Neste Foundation.

Biography

IC Visual Lab (ICVL) is a Bristol-based independent arts organisation working across photography, film, visual archives, and education. Founded to create new ways of producing, sharing and understanding visual culture, ICVL brings together artists, communities, researchers and cultural organisations through exhibitions, commissions, participatory projects and alternative forms of learning.

Its work focuses on making visual culture more accessible, collaborative and socially engaged, with a particular interest in underrepresented stories, archives and communities. Through long-term partnerships and experimental approaches to cultural production, ICVL aims to democratise who gets to make, shape and preserve culture.

In collaboration with:

Supported by:

HEAT: Magnum Foundation

Posted on September 16, 2026October 1, 2026 by BPFTest_Admin

Heat brings together projects developed through Magnum Foundation’s 2023–25 Photography Expanded Fellowship, which supported photographers exploring new ways of telling stories about the climate crisis and the inextricable relationship between communities and land. Across eighteen landscapes around the world, these photographers encounter places where multiple timelines coexist: histories embedded in the land, environmental transformations unfolding in the present, and futures that remain to be imagined.

Rather than depicting climate change solely through images of catastrophe, the projects look at the longer histories and lived experiences behind environmental disruption. They reveal how landscapes become archives—holding memories of extraction and displacement, but also knowledge, resilience and forms of connection passed between generations. The past is not behind us; it continues to shape the conditions of the present.

Across these eighteen projects, the climate crisis is understood not as a single event or distant future, but as a condition unfolding across multiple timescales. The photographs bring past, present and future into the same frame, asking us to consider how the landscapes we inherit shape the worlds we are capable of imagining and what might remain for those who come after us.

Photographers Included

Andrea Hernández Briceño (Venezuela), Farhana Satu (Bangladesh), Fatma Fahmy (Egypt), Florence Goupil (Peru), Gayatri Ganju (India), Giya Makondo-Wills (United Kingdom / South Africa), Hashem Shakeri (Iran), José Luis Arroyo-Robles (Mexico), Kunga Tashi Lepcha (India), Luis Antonio Rojas (Mexico), Luján Agusti (Argentina), Mahmoud Khattab (Egypt), María Valqui (Peru), Miora Rajaonary (Madagascar), Ofoe Amegavie (Ghana), River Claure (Bolivia), seth cardinal dodginghorse (Tsuut’ina Nation), and Zumrad Mirzalieva (Uzbekistan).

In collaboration with:

Supported by:

Inherited with Kelly O’Brien and Yuko Edwards

Posted on September 16, 2026October 1, 2026 by BPFTest_Admin

The exhibition at KIT FORM brings together the work of two local artists, Yuko Edwards and Kelly O’Brien. Both artists explore what is valued, inherited and made visible within family histories:

Kelly O’Brien — No Rest for the Wicked

Kelly O’Brien explores domestic work by intertwining her family’s stories with issues of class, gender, and occupation, advocating for the visibility of working women and their struggles. In her works, the narrative shifts between the tensions of domestic burdens—a shadowed space where gender disparities persist—and the paradox of the home as a sanctuary. No Rest for the Wicked celebrates the home to reveal the invisible labour that underlies it. The project highlights the experiences of women whose work, both inside and outside the home, often goes unrecognised.

Yuko Edwards — What You See in my Face

What You See in my Face begins with Yuko Edwards’ discovery of historical family negatives, prints, postcards and letters in her stepmother’s family home, recently inherited by her interracial parents. Within her work, the house becomes a living archive, containing traces of those who have belonged to the family and those yet to come. Edwards uses these materials to question how inheritance shapes identity within blended and mixed-race families, and how family histories exceed the fixed narratives suggested by biology or DNA.

Through reprinting, layering, reframing and annotating archival images, alongside family conversations and the insertion of her own image, voice and material traces, Edwards explores the archive as both evidence and omission. Her work asks where Black presence sits within an inherited visual history, and what happens when previously fragmented narratives are re-read and re-contextualised. Photography becomes not simply a record of the past, but an active space for negotiating memory, belonging, absence and connection.

Biographies

Kelly O’Brien is an artist, researcher, and lecturer based in England. Her Irish immigrant, working class background shapes a multidisciplinary practice spanning image‑making, sculpture, and installation. She explores the politics of in/visibility, using absence to rethink how people, places, and histories are shown and understood. Her work centres on restorative representation, collaboration, and working class feminist perspectives. She focuses on what is often overlooked, treating invisibility not as a lack but as a space for imagination and collective possibility.

Recent exhibitions – The Wellcome Collection (ENG), Two Temple Place (ENG), Fondazione MAST (IT), Sunny Bank Mills (ENG), The ALBERTINA Museum (AUT), and The Women’s Art Collection (ENG) and The Glynn Vivian (WLS). Recent Collection Acquisitions – The Arts Council Collection (UK) and The Vurbund Collection (AUT).

Yuko Edwards is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Bristol, England. Whether the work manifests itself as video, photography or mixed media, her art is always an ongoing conversation about place, space, identity, self-identity and how we each live within these frameworks.

Archival material, including found family photographs, are often used as starting points for storytelling and to question existing social structures. Her photographic approach combines documentary with an imaginative and often personal dimension. History is used as a reference point in Edwards’ work to help us understand where we’ve been and where we are going. Since 2018, her work has been shown in festivals and exhibitions in the UK including Somerset House, M-Shed and the RWA.

Both practices reveal inheritance as something more complex than property or bloodline: it is also a selective and uneven transmission of memory, work, resilience and unequal social value.Together, the projects ask who and what is remembered, what is hidden? What does memory do and when does it count? And, how photography can challenge the structures that determine whose lives, histories and labour are considered valuable.

Supported by:

Launch Night & Listening Event

Posted on September 16, 2026September 24, 2026 by BPFTest_Admin

Realms of Memory Opening Event at the RPS in collaboration with WMA and the University of Bristol.

Join us to celebrate the opening of the festival:

6-9pm @ The Welcome Building – where we will be launching 5 exhibitions:

One of Many: An Alternative History of Photography (group exhibition)
Stray Sod by Maria Lax
Studio Kegham by Kegham Djeghalian Jr
Common Sense by Martin Parr
Heat (group exhibition in partnership with the Magnum Foundation)

To mark the launch, we have organised two special in-conversation events, including musical contributions.

> The Sounds of Stray Sod with Maria Lax and David McKeown – To produce the exhibition Stray Sod, artist Maria Lax worked closely with the Irish National Folklore Collection, investigating stories in which travellers are led astray, becoming lost within unfamiliar landscapes. To mark the opening, Maria will discuss the project in conversation with the exhibition’s curators. We will also be joined by music curator David Mckeown (known for his contributions to Accidental Meetings and the inis.eto mix series) who will be selecting and playing Irish folk records in response to Maria’s work.

> Jazz in Exile with Christine Eyene – Between 1970 and 1994, the photographer George Hallett documented the life of exiled South African activists, writers, musicians and visual artists, in England, France and the Netherlands. Curator Christine Eyene will be introducing Hallett’s work and playing rare recordings of the Jazz musicians he photographed.

TICKETS

We have decided to make this event free so that all can attend. However, donations are welcome. If you are attending the full evening, we encourage you to donate a minimum of £6 to help cover the contributors fees.

BOOK TICKETS

OTHER KEY INFO

This event is taking place at The Welcome Building (Avon Street, BS2 0QF).

Freelance Job Opportunity: Volunteer Coordinator

Posted on September 4, 2026September 24, 2026 by BPFTest_Admin

The third edition of Bristol Photo Festival will run from Thursday 14^th October – Sunday 15^th November. While opening times will vary, all independent exhibition venues will be open Thursday-Sunday, 12-6pm. These venues include: IC Visual Lab, Kit Form, Centre Space, and The Welcome Centre

We are looking for a volunteer coordinator to help manage the day-to-day running of our four independent venues. Typical tasks could include:

Running 1-2 training sessions with prospective volunteers, helping them to understand their responsibilities.
Creating a volunteer rota and sharing this with the volunteers.
Establishing and managing a volunteer whatsapp group.
Ensuring that exhibition venues are opened and closed every day (Thursday-Sunday). This could involve managing security practicalities including venue keys.
Invigilating exhibitions where required, including welcoming audiences and leading impromptu tours.
Ensuring that all venues are well stocked with exhibition maps and merchandise.
Taking donations using the festival’s digital payment system.
Recording visitor numbers to be sent to the wider festival team.
Creating social media posts about the exhibition, to be shared by the festival team.

About you

We’re looking for an enthusiastic, well-organised and sociable individual to join our team. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t worked for a festival before; we’re interested in hearing how your experience will help you to fulfil the role. We are particularly looking for the following skills and experience:

Reliable and well-organised, including an ability to work independently.
Excellent communication skills and an ability to talk to any member of the public.
An ability to problem-solve and find solutions to everyday work problems.
A keen interest in photography, visual culture and contemporary social issues.

If you believe that you are the right person for this role, we want to hear from you.

Job details

The job is a fixed-term contract for the duration of the festival. You must be available to work as follows:

2 x days per week through the first half of October (4 days total), helping to recruit and train volunteers.
4 x days per week (Thursday-Sunday) throughout the duration of the festival (Thu 15th Oct – Sun 15th Nov)

Salary: £12.72 per hour

How to apply

Please send a cover letter and CV to engagement@bristolphotofestival.org

Please use the cover letter to outline how your experience to date enables you to meet the 4 bullet points listed under ‘About You’ above.

The deadline for applications is Tuesday 15^th September at 5pm.

Interview Process

Interviews will take place w/c 21^st September.