b-side
Free to Apply
Closing: 9th February 2026
b-side invites artists working in any medium to propose new, temporary, site-responsive commissions for the 2026 festival on the Isle of Portland. This year’s theme, “That Other Place – A Portland Fair,” explores parallel worlds and alternate realities inspired by Portland’s historic Fair (which ran for 200+ years until 2001). Rather than recreating the past, b-side seeks work that reawakens the Fair’s experience in stranger, sideways ways—imagining a mirror-Island where weird echoes and “what ifs” come alive.
Part of the wider Common Lands programme examining connections to land, locality, and community, this strand asks: what happens when our current land isn’t working? How can we learn from otherness to create new lands where we might better live together? b-side welcomes proposals that stretch reality, play with parallel Portlands, invite interaction, respond to the Island’s stories and landscapes, and make imaginative use of site and atmosphere. Open to visual artists, performers, sonic explorers, digital creators, community weavers, and installation-builders at any career stage. Successful applicants receive commission fees up to £2,500 plus production support.