Uncover HERstory in a city-wide audio experience as part of Brighton Festival

Forming part of the Brighton Festival, HERstory will be a city-wide audio storytelling experience, featuring real stories of Brighton-based women living through the COVID-19 pandemic.

HERstory will bring to life the works of writers Sabrina Mahfouz, Jade Anouka, Kate O’Donnell, Nessah Muthy, Monsay Whitney, Rachael Young and Yolanda Mercy, in an insightful and inspiring way in which women can be heard. 

The pieces will be moving and cover emotional and universal topics such as exploring the exhaustion of a hospital worker who is left alone in the dark in Rachael Young’s piece. Other topics covered will be a strained mother-daughter relationship, a woman embracing her choice to quit her office job to become a sex worker, the pandemic through the eyes of a child, single mums and fights for freedom including Yolanda Mercy’s piece on one women’s fight to help refugees. Other writers involved in HERStory include Zena Rose-Allen, Mia Daliya Cunningham, Shirley Falchi, Jenny Milligan, Julie Orchard, Anna Osella, Malasula Peace, Phonetic, Boudicca Pepper, Nou Ra and Carley Reid

The project will allow audiences to travel around Brighton on the trail whilst listening to the stories being presented. There are 18 writers in total, eight of whom are community writers from Brighton.

There will be 18 listening posts and you will be able to scan the QR code in places such as Hangleton, Moulsecoomb, Whitehawk and Central Brighton to listen to the stories and view the portraits of the Brighton women. The photos for these have been captured by Amaal Said, a former Barbican Young Poet. 

HERstory is an Arch 468 Production, co-commissioned by Brighton Festival, Arch 468, Lighthouse and created by Stef O'Driscoll. It will run in the city from Saturday 1 May – Monday 31 May 2021.

For more information, please click here.