Equally striking is the festival’s embrace of the commercial void. As high-street retail struggles, PAF has brokered temporary “meanwhile use” licenses with landlords. Abandoned carpet stores become projection rooms. A former betting shop on Fratton Road became a sound-art labyrinth. This pragmatic curating turns urban decay into a canvas, forcing passersby—who might never set foot in a traditional gallery—to walk directly through an artwork to get to the chip shop. Not everyone is convinced. Walk down Albert Road during the festival and you’ll hear the grumbles.
The organizers are aware. This year’s theme is “Unfinished Business,” deliberately embracing rough edges, live painting, and works that degrade over the week. The opening night party will not be in a hired hall, but in a working boatyard, with a DJ set playing from the gantry of a dry dock. portsmouth arts festival
The first festival was a shoestring affair: 12 artists, three venues, one borrowed projector. But it struck a nerve. In a city where nearly 30% of the working population is employed in defense, logistics, or retail, PAF offered a release valve for creative energy that had long been sidelined as a hobby. Equally striking is the festival’s embrace of the
Now in its eighth year, the festival has matured from a plucky fringe event into a cornerstone of the South Coast’s cultural calendar. Yet its journey reveals a constant tension: Can a city built on function truly embrace the abstract? The festival’s origin story is quintessentially Portsmouth. In 2016, a collective of local artists—frustrated by the lack of dedicated exhibition space outside of the prestigious Aspex Gallery—decided to stop asking for permission. A former betting shop on Fratton Road became
The 2024 festival seemed to heed that advice. The most talked-about piece was Three Generations of Grit , a photo-text installation by Portsmouth-born photographer Jade Okito. Hung in the waiting room of a working laundrette, the series documented her mother, grandmother, and herself—three women who worked at the dockyard, the call center, and the care home respectively. It was political, raw, and deeply local. It also had a queue around the block. Beyond the discourse, the numbers are compelling. A 2023 economic impact assessment found that PAF generated £1.2 million for the local economy—not through ticket sales (most events are pay-what-you-can), but through secondary spending. Visitors fill hotels, eat at Southsea’s independent restaurants, and drink in pubs.
“You can’t transplant that show to London,” says Haines. “The damp, the smell of creosote, the sound of actual ferries vibrating the walls—that is the medium.”
Crucially, the festival acts as a talent pipeline. Local graduate shows from the University’s Creative and Cultural Industries faculty have seen a 40% increase in retention rates since PAF began. Artists who once felt forced to move to Bristol or London are now staying, forming collectives, and opening permanent micro-galleries in the arches beneath the railway viaduct.