Announcing the AND Festival 2026 programme
Thu 16 Jul 2026Full programme and tickets are now live for the 10th edition of AND Festival.
You can now unpack our festival programme of commissions, immersive installation, durational audiovisual work, films, urgent conversations and stimulating talks, taking place online and in unexpected locations across Barnsley and Elsecar.
In this festival edition, we explore infrastructure as a lived material and cultural condition, illuminating the connection between people and place. We examine the networks, historical extraction legacies, and social climates that underpin contemporary life in the North of England.
Across sound, simulation, and participatory systems, the festival dwells in the liminal zones of place, where infrastructures reveal the uneven geographies of industry, ecology, and community, and collective imaginaries take shape through shared experience.
AND Festival 2026 presents playful opportunities to encounter the in-between. Join us to reimagine relationships between humans, landscapes, and the built environments we inhabit that inform our daily rhythms.
All events and experiences below are free to attend, we encourage reserving your place for Acoustic Memories, Krumville. Northern Passage: A Quest To Hopian and Intra Protocol to guarantee entry at your preffered time. Walk-ups available. All other events are drop in.
Acoustic Memories
MONOM
Elsecar Heritage Centre
Fri 25 – Sun 27 September \\ 11-7pm \\ Slots on the hour
Elsecar Heritage Centre
An immersive spatial audio installation exploring the acoustic memory of extraction and the hidden infrastructures beneath Barnsley’s industrial landscape. A new commission for AND Festival 2026.
Krumville
Dian Joy
Fri 25 – Sun 27 September \\10-6pm \\ Slots on the hour
Barnsley Civic
Krumville is a multi-screen film exploring memory, perception, and mediated experience through a fictional town created from remixing algorithmic image-making and personal recollections. A new commission for AND Festival 2026.
Northern Passage: A Quest To Hopian
Jazmin Morris
Fri 25 – Sun 27 September \\ 10-6pm \\ Slots on the hour
The Glassworks Barnsley
Northern Passage: A Quest To Hopian is an interactive three-level game inspired by real locations in Barnsley, gradually transforming from sparse and inert landscapes into vibrant worlds. A new commission for AND Festival 2026.
Chaos Theory
Metahaven
Fri 25 – Sun 27 September \\ 11-7pm \\ Drop-in
Elsecar Heritage Centre
An audiovisual poem structured around the dialogues and wanderings of two characters confronting the contemporary world and its puzzling flows of interconnected phenomena.
Hapi Tomorrow
Visuals by Chepertom (Thomas Collet) and music by ZULI
Screening as part of SERVER at Barnsley Civic \\ Time TBA
Time TBA
An audio-visual work mapping a landscape where the birth and death of human civilisation ripple across the computer screen. A world premiere.
Intra Protocol
Sally Golding and Matt Spendlove
Sat 26 Sept \\ 4-7pm \\ Durational
Parkway Cinema
Intra Protocol is a site-responsive immersive audiovisual work that transforms the cinema into a living instrument.
SERVER
Going Away.tv
Fri 25 – Sun 27 September \\ 10.30-5.30pm \\ Drop-in
Barnsley Civic
SERVER is a continuous, 7-hour, artist-led festival film channel creating space for critical reflection, speculative storytelling and interdisciplinary exchange.
(W)HOLE
Clusterduck
Fri 25 – Sun 27 September \\ 10-6pm \\ Public Relam
Locations TBA
(W)HOLE uncovers hidden digital infrastructures through sculpture and AR, using manhole covers as portals to reveal interconnected systems.
Unsecuring Infrastructures
A live research environment for thinking critically and speculatively about Barnsley’s designation as the UK’s first Tech Town, through the lens of the festival’s core commissions.
AND Festival 2026 is produced by Abandon Normal Devices. Hosted by Barnsley Museums and Barnsley Civic, developed in partnership with Barnsley Council, and part of a wider touring programme with partners Full of Noises, Right Up Our Street, Wigan Council and Lancaster University. Supported using public funding through the National Lottery by Arts Council England.
