At a time when play is increasingly mediated through digital platforms, constrained by political systems, commercialised by algorithms and transformed by AI, FORMAT27 asks what it means to reclaim play as a creative, social and political act.
Across the Festival, PLAY will be engaged with as a form of experimentation, improvisation and rule breaking, using humour, performance, games, and participation to question power, authorship, identity, and the politics of images. FORMAT27 is looking for a wide and inventive range of submissions and is open to all approaches and ideas from the archive to the most contemporary and conceptual projects. Including proposals from all the image-based genres, long term researched documentary; multimedia; VR; moving image; installation; publications; online; interactive; performance; participatory; mobile and interactive.
FORMAT27 incorporates many of Derby’s most beautiful buildings and key landmarks including: QUAD, University of Derby, Derby Museum & Art Gallery alongside activating disused city spaces and buildings as temporary galleries. FORMAT’s friends and partners collaborate to offer a fringe of related activities across Derby, as well as satellite venues in Leicester, Nottingham and beyond.
FORMAT International Photography Festival is curated, organised and led by QUAD, with strategic partnership support from the University of Derby. QUAD is funded and supported by Arts Council England, BFI, and Derby City Council, with additional support from a range of national and international partners.
Information
Format Festival
Derby, Great-Britain
June 24, 2026 to September 07, 2026
