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.
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. portsmouth arts festival
In the end, the Portsmouth Arts Festival succeeds because it refuses to polish the rust off its subject. It understands that this city is not a quaint fishing village or a gleaming metropolis. It is a working machine, loud and salty and a little bit broken. And on a grey October evening, when a projection of a weeping woman appears on the side of a block of council flats, and a crowd of dockworkers and students stop to stare—that is the art that matters. The 2024 festival seemed to heed that advice
By 2024, the festival featured over 200 artists across 40 venues, drawing an estimated 15,000 visitors. The funding mix has shifted too—now a blend of Arts Council England grants, Portsmouth City Council backing, and a surprisingly robust crowdfunding campaign from locals who donate via the “Friends of the Ferry” scheme. What sets PAF apart from homogenized “art walks” in Brighton or Winchester is its forensic use of place. Curators lean into Portsmouth’s unique, sometimes ugly, topography. It was political, raw, and deeply local
Last year’s standout installation, Sonar for the Soul , took place inside the Round Tower—a 15th-century artillery fort at the mouth of the harbour. Artist Lorna Haines filled the cold, echoing chamber with hydrophones recording the Solent’s seabed, layered over a choir singing sea shanties in reverse. The effect was disorienting, eerie, and utterly specific to that location.
